#oneaday Day 57: The evolution of interactive fiction

I've been playing Disco Elysium for the last couple of evenings. I finally got around to nabbing it in its The Final Cut incarnation last GOG.com sale, and I felt like playing something a bit "different", so I fired it up. (I'd also been waiting until the hype surrounding it had died down so I could approach it with fresh eyes and zero expectations or prejudices.)

This is a very good game, although it's also a game for a very specific type of person. Despite having console versions, it is very much a game for those who grew up with PC gaming in what old men like me tend to vaguely refer to as its "golden age" — around the turn of the century, approximately. No, I'll be a bit more specific; it's for people who grew up with text adventures and subsequently found themselves particularly enjoying CRPGs on PC in the late '90s/early '00s.

The reason I say this is because Disco Elysium has a significant text component. All of it is voice acted — and for the most part voice acted very well, I have to say — but at its heart, it is a role-playing game in which the majority of its major happenings are conveyed almost entirely through text rather than flashy graphics or even animations. It takes some strong cues from the legendary Planescape: Torment in this regard, but it also successfully distinguishes itself as something that builds on what that game was doing, rather than simply aping it.

For the unfamiliar, the big Thing with Disco Elysium is that it's a role-playing game that focuses almost entirely on non-combat situations. I'm not even sure there's a combat system at all — after playing for (checks GOG Galaxy) 8 hours so far, there has not been a single fight. Instead, everything has occurred through a combination of exploration and text-based interactions.

This isn't to say that Disco Elysium is a kinetic novel, either. Not only do you have a lot of choices in terms of dialogue options in most conversations and interactions, but the wide array of skills your player character has play a significant role in almost everything that happens in the game. And, unusually, this isn't just the form of "SUCCESS/FAILURE" rolls to perform particular actions based on your skills — although those do feature at various points — but rather the various facets of your personality actually "speaking" to you, offering suggestions and commentary on what is going on.

For example, if you've put points into the Empathy skill, at various points in conversations your Empathy trait will actually chime in to "conversations", giving you greater insight into how the person you're talking to is feeling, or how you might be able to get through to them. Your Perception skill will "speak" to you and notice little habits people have. Your Drama skill will flamboyantly point out opportunities where you might be able to express yourself. And there are tons more besides these examples, suggesting that playing Disco Elysium with a different "build" of skills and stats will end up being a markedly different experience; it'll still cover the same basic plot beats and events, but doubtless you'll end up resolving various situations in different ways.

This is really cool, and it feels very much like a natural evolution of interactive fiction. While you don't have quite as much freedom as in a traditional "text adventure" style piece of interactive fiction by virtue of not having a text parser to type in whatever you want, there's a really strong feeling that you're seeing the world through the eyes of the character that you have designed. And, interestingly, that character is designed not as an "ideal", but as an absolute wreck of a human being.

Amnesia is an overdone trope, particularly in role-playing games, but having your player character waking up with a raging hangover and no memory of what got him into the situation he starts the game in is a great means of bringing the player into the game almost in medias res. You, the player, are discovering things about the game world and the story as the protagonist character is (re)discovering them, and you have a lot of scope as to how you want to play that protagonist, who is canonically a policeman.

Do you play things by the book and attempt to impress your partner with how you get your life back together and work hard on solving the investigation that has brought you together? Do you lean into the "weird" and start freaking people out with how you behave around them? Do you start spouting particularly extreme political ideologies at every opportunity? You have the option to do all of these things in Disco Elysium, right up to deciding that you're the one who is going to bring Communism to the people, becoming a massive racist or turning into someone whose sense of self-worth flew out of the window along with his shoe prior to us joining the narrative at the start of the game.

A lot of it is smoke and mirrors, I'm sure, but I can't remember the last time I felt like I was so completely being invited to inhabit the role of a game's main character. The way Disco Elysium works strikes a great balance between having some things that are canonical fact about the protagonist, and allowing you to mould them as you see fit.

I'm not sure it would have quite the same impact if you had a completely freeform self-insert protagonist, because the temptation there is always to go down the "idealised" route, and a significant part of Disco Elysium involves how one deals with one's own flaws — whether that be accepting them, attempting to overcome them, ignoring them in the hope they don't mess things up further for you, or leaning hard into them. By forcing us to inhabit this absolute disaster of a human being, we're put in a position where we can explore how we might get out of a situation that is pretty much rock bottom. Will we rise to the challenges life has thrown at us — at least some of which are our own fault? Or will we crumble under the pressure?

It's a game that I feel could have only been made these days. I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops — and if my take on the protagonist manages to survive to the end of proceedings.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 56: Disconnect

I'm officially on holiday for a week! I don't have anything much planned for the time off, aside from our trip on Thursday to go and look at pianos, but I'm going to try and be vaguely "productive" with my time. That means I'm going to try and force myself out in this heat and into the gym — once I'm in the air conditioning, I'm sure it'll be fine — and I'm going to record some videos, and perhaps write some stuff.

One thing I'm going to try and make an effort to do is not look at "online" stuff as much as humanly possible. I'm not going to look at Twitter (easy, since I don't have an account any more except the official one I use for work), I'm not going to look at Facebook (ditto), I'm not going to look at BlueSky (easy enough) and I'm probably going to try and ration my Discord usage as much as possible also.

I just don't want to know, you see. I don't want or need to know what people are arguing about today, or what the worst people on the Internet are being sexist, racist or transphobic about today. I don't want to know about the seemingly endless parade of layoffs in the games industry. And I don't want to know how shit online media in general is. I know all these things. They are not going to change.

Instead, I would like a nice, quiet week off, away from it all as much as possible. This will demand a certain amount of willpower, of course, but I'm confident I can find enough things to occupy myself with that I won't need to idly flip through social-related apps on my phone. I have games to play, books to read, episodes of Deep Space Nine to watch, music to play, videos to make and all manner of other things. So why should I waste my time with stuff that, on balance, makes me miserable?

I shouldn't, obviously. So that's the plan. Minimise looking at anything potentially upsetting, frustrating or annoying online and just enjoy the things I have around me. I will, of course, still be checking in here and those videos I'm making will be up on YouTube, but aside from that… a bit of "digital detox" is just what the doctor ordered for a week. I hope it leaves me feeling refreshed, because heaven knows I feel run-down right now.

Time for the first sleep of the holiday, then. Bring on the aircon!

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#oneaday Day 55: Do Not Turn AI On Without Asking Me

Partway through writing the previous post, I was surprised to see a weird yellow underline appear under one of the words I'd used. I hovered over it and was horrified to see the symbol no-one wants to see pop up, completely unasked for and unbidden. It seems that Automattic, makers of WordPress and specifically the JetPack plugin that handles things like social sharing and search engine optimisation, have been sneaking in an "AI Assistant" without anyone asking for it.

And I really haven't asked for it, because I saw it pop up in the sidebar a few months back and immediately turned it off in the options. See:

And yet turning it off in there has not made it go away. Because this shit is still here:

I do not want this. I did not ask for this. I specifically turned this off and it's still fucking there. And you can guarantee with that "Available Requests" counter at the bottom, they're going to try and sell me a subscription plan to get more "credits" for their stupid pointless pile of crap feature.

I am not the only one who feels this way. And the fact that comments are closed on WordPress' blog announcing this garbage feature speaks volumes.

A recent study published by the Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management suggests that the terms "AI" or "artificial intelligence" are proving a turnoff to users.

"When AI is mentioned, it tends to lower emotional trust," said the lead author Mesut Cicek. "We found emotional trust plays a critical role in how consumers perceive AI-powered products."

The study is mostly around purchasing decisions rather than just generally using services, but the point stands: people see "AI" in something these days, and unless they're an insufferable Silicon Valley-poisoned techbro, they are immediately switched off by it. Social network Bluesky recently announced that they were partnering with social analytics and scheduling platform Buffer, and the response was universally negative not because Buffer is a particularly bad service on the whole — I've used it in the past — but because they, like so many other tech companies right now, have shoehorned in an "AI Assistant" when no-one wanted one.

No-one wants this. Stop trying to make AI happen. It's not going to happen.

I've long recommended WordPress as a great platform for folks who want to build a regularly updated website without getting too deep into the nitty gritty of web dev. But forcing AI on people may cause me to rethink that somewhat.

I wouldn't mind it being there if it was opt-in, and one could ignore it. But it is not. It is turned on by default. And you can't make it completely go away, only stop it being quite as annoying.

I cannot wait for this AI "gold rush" to be over. It is infesting everything even vaguely tech-related right now, including services that, as noted, I would previously have recommended without any reservations whatsoever.

Fuck off, AI. As a large language model, you are ill-equipped to receive my fist up your arsehole, but you're going to anyway.

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#oneaday Day 54: Catch-Up Time

I apparently forgot to write anything yesterday! In my defence, it is so brain-meltingly hot here right now that remembering to do literally anything is proving to be somewhat troublesome. After I'm done here, I'm going to go and sit in the air-conditioning in the bedroom and watch some Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

I've got a week off from work next week, which I'm looking forward to. I'm feeling a bit run-down and tired at the moment, and a bit of a break is just what I need. Plus I have some potential excitement ahead: hopefully next week I will be getting a new piano, or at least ordering a new piano. The one we got for £250 a few years back has pretty much reached the end of its life, as it's not staying in tune at all, and is, to put it mildly, displeasurable to both play and listen to. So it's going, hopefully to be replaced with something much nicer and newer.

I'm looking forward to this, because I keep telling myself that I should play the piano more, but then with the piano itself not being at its best, I felt disinclined to spend time with it. Still, it's had some good times here in its lifetime, and we must have had it a few years at this point. (According to the archives, we got it in 2015.) It has to go, though, and sadly, due to its age, it's unlikely to find a new home. The place I'll hopefully be getting a new piano from is able to take it away and responsibly dispose of it, though, so hopefully at least some of its components can live on as spares or something.

I've probably shared some piano stuff on here at some point in the past, if you're not already familiar. Hold on and let me rummage through the archives.

Hmm. Can't find anything on the blog, but there's a couple of things on YouTube. Here you go:

And here:

Both of those were actually recorded using the electric piano I still own but don't really have anywhere convenient to put. And annoyingly, the make of electric piano I have seems to be the one and only that they don't make stands for. I have an X-shaped keyboard stand for it, but that's far too wobbly and uncomfortable for everyday use — plus since the electric piano doesn't have any built-in speakers, I'd have to find somewhere to put the amp that goes with it. Not ideal.

So yeah. Hopefully by this time next week I will have, at the very least, ordered a new piano. I look forward to sharing it with you!

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#oneaday Day 53: Our AI-powered dystopian garbage future

I was unfortunately exposed to this video today:

For those who quite understandably can't bring themselves to watch it based on the thumbnail and source alone, it's a video about how a dad is super-proud of his daughter and her athletics ability, but how he also knows that his daughter idolises an Olympic athlete. All seemingly wholesome and nice on the surface, until the main point of the ad: the Dad gets Google Gemini (which is Google's ChatGPT-esque chatbot interface) to write the athlete in question a "fan letter" that is supposedly from his daughter.

It's difficult to know exactly where to start with how fucked up this is. But I think as good a place as any is to point out that written communication between people has always been a means of direct, personal contact — particularly if it's via what is seen as a medium that takes a bit more effort, such as a handwritten letter. Of course, chances are that if the "fan letter" ever made it to the athlete in question, any response would probably be a carefully vetted template from a PR representative rather than the athlete herself, which sticks something of a pin in the "direct, personal contact" thing, but that's no reason that regular people who aren't PR consultants should auto-generate things that are supposed to be personal.

If someone inspires you, you presumably respect them. And if you respect them, you should demonstrate that respect by making an appropriate effort when attempting to contact them. And getting an AI to write a fan letter for you is the height of disrespect. It tells the recipient that you don't even respect them enough to communicate with them in your own words. It tells them that you would rather get a machine to handle your communication than "waste time" writing things yourself.

"But what about people who aren't able to write?" you may ask. To that I would point out that in order to get Google Gemini to write something, you still have to write a fucking prompt for it, and if you're capable of doing that you're capable of writing a letter. They teach how to do that in primary school. At least they used to.

There are myriad other ways to get your point across without getting garbage generative AI involved, even if you're incapable of holding a pen or typing on a keyboard. There's voice recognition, allowing you to still communicate in your own words without typing. Or you can get someone to help you — remember other people? Remember how to speak to them? Or do you need ChatGPT for that too? I'm a socially anxious autistic recluse and I can still talk to a person if I absolutely have to, and on more than one occasion I have sent some form of personal message to someone who genuinely inspires me, all in my own words.

We absolutely should not normalise the use of AI to craft even form responses to emails. I used to get mildly offended when a pal of mine used the "auto-respond" text message facility on his phone, which would send a rather blunt "Answer is YES" or "Answer is NO" SMS on his behalf if he couldn't be bothered to type a full message, but at least in that instance I know he had at least read my message and considered whether to respond in the affirmative or negative.

AI zealots seem to think that garbage like this is going to revolutionise communication between human beings, making it "more efficient" or some such bullshit. But all it's going to do is remove any semblance of personality from an individual's method of communication with you — something which is already somewhat at risk as a result of the homogenisation of culture brought about by the Internet. Look at how many people fall back on the same memes and turn of phrase these days rather than communicating in their own individual fashion, using their background and location as a means of making their communication unique. Now imagine even that layer of personalisation being taken away, with everyone "communicating" with one another using that smug, pretentious tone all AI chatbots appear to have developed.

"You're just resistant to change!" Yes, I am, if that "change" is demonstrably harmful to the way we interact with one another and our culture in general. Anyone who uses AI to communicate with someone rather than drafting an email, chat message or social media post themselves is an inconsiderate, disrespectful asshole, and I will absolutely not shift my opinion on this. I will, however, point and laugh.

So fuck off with your "Gemini" garbage, Google. And Mr Man's little girl? Tell your father to go fuck himself, punch him in the balls hard enough that he doesn't have any more children, and go write something yourself, with a pen. I can guarantee that your idol Sydney will find that far more meaningful and emotionally worthwhile than what is effectively a form letter that you didn't even write the prompt for.

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#oneaday Day 52: To Be Forgotten is Worse Than Death

I finished Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail this evening. Or its main scenario, anyway; I haven't gone into any endgame stuff such as the Arcadion raid series or level-cap dungeons as yet, but it's late and that's stuff best saved for another day.

I'm going to write something big about Final Fantasy XIV on MoeGamer at some point in the next few days, incorporating my thoughts about Dawntrail and the game as a whole as it exists in 2024, but for now I thought I'd share some immediate impressions.

On the whole, I liked Dawntrail. I particularly enjoyed how it felt like a proper "sequel" to the Final Fantasy XIV story that was told between A Realm Reborn and Endwalker rather than just a continuation of the story. This was always the stated intention, but it would have been easy for them to try and weave in stuff that had come before like the Ascians. They actually do weave in some of that past stuff in the latter hours of the story, but in a way that you would in a sequel, rather than a straight "next episode".

Dawntrail's main scenario felt quite long, which is probably a mixed blessing for some people. I went back and forth a bit on it as I played — there were days when I didn't fancy playing it, so I turned to something else then came back fresh a few days later — but on the whole, I think its overall length and structure works effectively. Since it's a "sequel", it's fitting that it is quite considerable in length — and even has a structure quite akin to PS1-era Final Fantasy games, with a notable tonal shift halfway through that absolutely would have been a "Please Insert Disc 2" moment in the Good Old Days.

One thing I think I've touched on in previous entries is how I feel Dawntrail's narrative is curiously timely, given the overall state of our own world. And this feeling didn't go away as I progressed into the latter hours of the story — but for different reasons. Without getting into spoilers, the first half of Dawntrail is about achieving mutual understanding and cooperation with people from disparate backgrounds and belief systems, while the latter half concerns what happens when it's not quite possible to achieve that mutual understanding, based on the enormous gulf in culture (and technology) between the two parties.

It also touches on matters such as the energy and environmental crises we're facing down — particularly if the techbros in Silicon Valley insist on jamming AI everywhere it isn't wanted — as well as matters of life after death in an age of technological innovation. It's no coincidence that the latter half of the game is heavily inspired by Final Fantasy IX, one of whose characters' iconic taglines was "to be forgotten is worse than death". I'm actually kind of surprised no-one actually said that line at any point in Dawntrail, because heaven knows several characters had multiple prime opportunities to do so. Perhaps they thought it might have been just a touch too on-the-nose.

I'm actually a little annoyed that the patch notes and promotional material for Dawntrail spoiled a significant feature of the game's overall setting and tone, because I feel that reveal would have been far more effective had it simply come up without anyone knowing about it beforehand. (I won't mention anything further about it for the sake of those who have deliberately avoided all promotional material for precisely this reason.) And there wasn't really even a good reason for them to spoil it, either, aside from, presumably, the expectation from the fanbase that everything is laid out for them well before release. And I guess if Square Enix didn't spoil it, the dataminers would have done so anyway.

Anyway, on the whole, Dawntrail was A Good. I enjoyed that it was possible to play the entire main scenario, including 4-player dungeons and 8-player trials, with NPC sidekicks rather than having to rely on other players, though it's a bit of a shame that the final boss is a multiplayer-only affair. This resulted in me spending a good 50% of said boss fight lying on the floor while the two surviving tanks finished it off because the healers were also both dead. Not quite the climactic conclusion I had hoped for, but at least I got a good look at the mechanics without having to actually do them.

So yeah. Good job, Yoshi-P and company. You did another great thing.

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#oneaday Day 51: The Art of the Thumbnail

I'm in a Discord with some other (relatively) low-subscriber retro gaming and tech YouTubers, and we've had some interesting discussions over there. One subject that comes up frequently that I think I've derived the most value from is that of video thumbnails.

To put this in context, prior to joining this Discord, and for quite some time, my YouTube channel looked something like this:

I don't dislike this look. I was rather fond of how each "series" I was doing had its own distinct appearance, and I feel each thumbnail got nicely to the point: telling viewers that it was a video about a particular game on a particular platform.

But that's not really how YouTube works. However nice it looks to have a lineup of games with lovely consistent thumbnails Criterion Collection-style, it doesn't necessarily bring the views in. And so, with the advice and encouragement of the folks in the aforementioned Discord, I do things a little bit differently now.

This is how my channel looks today:

I'm pleased with this. Because I feel like these thumbnails do a much better job of intriguing and attracting the viewer's attention without assuming knowledge — i.e. "what is 'Atari A to Z'?" — while still allowing me a certain degree of consistency and coherence that makes my work immediately identifiable if you know what to look for.

Best of all, I haven't resorted to any of the more flagrantly transparent "clickbait" techniques, and "YouTube Face" is nowhere to be seen. The videos I make on YouTube are not for the same audience as Mr. Beast, so I make zero effort to court the sort of people who respond to those sorts of thumbnails.

And it works. At least I think so. Some of my videos perform about as well as what I considered a "solid performance" two or three years ago — that is to say, breaking three figures in the view count — but quite a lot more of them exceed that by two, three or even four times. And I've had a few breakout successes: my Super Woden GP 2 video sits at 86K views to date, my look at Ultima love letter Moonring has 21K views to date (and a very long tail), my video covering the announcement of The400 Mini attracted 14K views, and most recently a video on Project Gotham Racing 3 brought in a relatively modest but still impressive-for-my-channel 2.5K pairs of eyes.

I don't do this for the views, as I quite frequently state; I do it because I enjoy it. But I won't pretend it's not nice when a video does well — at least partly because it results in a bit of pocket money for me. That Super Woden GP 2 video made me over a hundred quid within a few days of it being posted. And now I get a small payout from YouTube earnings (i.e. the minimum payment threshold) every couple of months, whereas once it was a far-off goal I thought I'd never achieve. That's nice.

The secret behind those thumbnails? It's not really anything complicated. The most effective advice from the Discord I've followed is to keep text to just a few bold words, and present those words using at least two of the following: a bold outline around the letters; a bold drop shadow; and slightly rotating various parts of the complete text so that the eye is drawn to lines that aren't quite "straight". That's about it. I don't overuse colour; I don't overdo the "big red arrow" or "circling the obvious thing" tricks (although I put in a big red arrow occasionally as an in-joke to the group, which refers to itself as the "Big Red Arrow Club"); and, as noted, I don't do the "YouTube Face".

It works for me. The result is a channel full of videos I'm proud to call my own, and which a gradually (very gradually) growing number of people are coming to appreciate. That's pleasing to me.

YouTube and YouTube culture has myriad problems, but it's still the best place to create and share stuff like this. It's a valuable means of self-expression and sharing one's interests, and it's something I'm glad I decided to get stuck into exploring properly.

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#oneaday Day 50: Another Project Complete

As of today, I now have videos recorded for all 25 of the games included on The400 Mini, the miniature games console based around the Atari 8-bit. Not all of them have been published yet — the final one, which covers both Centipede and Millipede, will be out later in the week — but it's nice to feel like another creative project is "done". If you're interested, I set up a playlist on YouTube here:

As you'll note from the thumbnail, this playlist includes both videos that I've previously recorded that happen to cover the games on The400 Mini and new vids that I've recorded specifically to look at everything included on the system. The Atari 5200 games included in the playlist, covered during my "Atari A to Z Flashback" project, where I made videos for all 150 games on Atari Flashback Classics for Switch, are fundamentally identical to their Atari 8-bit counterparts, and a few others I'd previously covered on the 8-bit-centric "Atari A to Z" series.

I'm pleased with this, at least partly because it means I can now get on with exploring the broader Atari 8-bit library once again. The games included on The400 Mini are a fun cross-section of what was out there on Atari 8-bit, but they are just a fraction of the whole picture — a picture that today includes some incredible efforts from modern developers who are still putting out amazing stuff for the platform.

One of the things that I hope comes to light for people who watch my videos is that a lot of games that ended up being very famous across multiple platforms actually got their start on Atari 8-bit. Off the top of my head that I've covered already, there's Boulder Dash, Alley Cat, Spelunker, Lode Runner, M.U.L.E. and plenty of others besides.

All of these are arguably more famous in other incarnations (except perhaps M.U.L.E.) but I feel it's important to acknowledge where they came from in the first place; a lot of self-styled gaming historians don't give the Atari 8-bit the credit it is due, assuming it to be a niche system on the level of stuff like the Oric Atmos, Dragon 32 and suchlike. But no; while the Atari 8-bit never had the same widespread acceptance of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, it was still a lively, active and well-supported system (supported by everyone except Atari for significant portions of its lifespan, anyway) with some excellent capabilities that the platform's more talented programmers really got to grips with.

I realise this all might sound a bit fanboyish, but that's just because, well, I'm an Atari fan. Always have been. And I feel it's a bit silly for big chunks of computing and gaming history to be ignored just because they didn't happen on the most famous platforms.

And so I will continue to bang that drum on my YouTube channel. I have a platform there, and have amassed a following of quite a reasonable size. If the stuff I do convinces just one or two people to explore things a little beyond the usual scope of "retro" — or just to acknowledge that Atari home computers exist — then I'll feel like I've done a decent job.

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#oneaday Day 49: No Hate

I have little to no time for cynical negativity, and I've felt this way for quite some time. I've been trying to pin down exactly why I feel like I can't participate in a conversation where one or more of the participants has switched to "cynical negativity" mode, and I think I've just answered my own question: it's because it feels like those who are being negative are trying to close the conversation.

I don't always mean literally, as in "let's not talk about this any more", but I tend to find that a negative opinion about something almost certainly stops people from wanting to pipe up and say "actually, I liked it", because these days that often seems to lead to an unnecessarily heated argument. Both sides become entrenched in their respective positions, and both inevitably come out of the encounter feeling worse about the other person.

I know. I have been there on a frustrating number of occasions. There are Discord servers that I have come to feel less than welcome in because I liked something that someone with a louder voice than me didn't. And I feel it's genuinely quite hard to find a place where you can just go and be enthusiastic about something any more, without some killjoy jumping in and rattling off a laundry list of its "flaws". And the negative one always seems to come off better than someone who feels positively about something — even when the positive one clearly knows a lot more about the thing in question.

Once someone has opened that initial negativity valve, one of two things tends to happen: 1) the conversation ends, with the positive person left feeling like they can no longer talk about something they like, or 2) other people, some of whom have no experience with the thing under discussion, feel emboldened to jump on board with the person being negative, leaving the positive person feeling like they're being ganged up on.

There are responses to this, and I've heard them all.

"If you really love something, you criticise it." That may be true, but "criticising it" is not the same as shitting all over it and, in some cases, casting aspersions on those who do like it.

"Stop being so defensive." I am defensive because you are attacking something that is important to me.

"People are allowed to have different opinions." If that is the case, why do I now feel like I cannot open my mouth and express my support for the thing that "the room" has now decided is "bad"?

"Stop playing the victim." I'm sorry, but after probably over a decade of this at this point — of feeling like I have no place to really "belong" — I feel somewhat hard done by.

More than anything, though, it's just boring. I know we can all have a good laugh at the creative ways in which people talk about things they dislike — it's a lot harder to be "amusing" when you're being positive, it seems — but when no-one seems to like anything any more, it becomes extremely tiresome.

I'm not saying no-one is allowed to dislike things. I'm not saying no-one is allowed to hate things with the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns. I'm saying I wish people would just be a little more considerate of those who like things, and want nothing more than to be able to talk about the things they like with other people.

Someone liking or loving something is an opportunity to learn and grow. Even if you end up not feeling the same way about the thing in question, you can learn something about the person you were talking to, and why the thing might be important to them. Meanwhile, if you close them down by saying you hate the thing before they've even had a chance to express themselves fully, that's a potential relationship that is never going to go anywhere.

I feel bad that I even have to justify this. But with every passing day, I feel more and more alienated from people who should, in theory, be my friends, based on our shared interests. But when I'm confronted with negativity, I don't feel welcome. I don't feel like anyone wants to understand me. And I don't feel like anyone wants to be my friend.

That's a really shitty way to be feeling, let me tell you. And I hope it never happens to you.

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#oneaday Day 48: Not So Great

Today was not so good. I spent a significant proportion of the evening having a fairly major panic attack. I thought I was just having a depressive episode, but when I realised I was shaking, my heart was racing and I was just generally feeling "afraid" to do anything, it became pretty clear what it actually was.

I decided to try and sleep it off, and while I don't feel great now, I think the worst has passed, and in the meantime I certainly had what felt like some interesting dreams. They were the kind of dreams that evaporate as soon as you wake up properly so I unfortunately can't say any more than that — aside from the phrase "it's stunning, so long as you already have the suspension of disbelief required for modern VR", for some reason — but they were certainly interesting.

This, of course, has pretty much taken up my entire evening and prevented me from doing anything more interesting, but sometimes you just have to try and take care of yourself the best way you know how. And when you're suffering from some form of mental health breakdown, sometimes the best thing to do is just find a place or situation in which you feel comfortable, and ride the damn thing out. There's a reason why so many folks make a connection between mental health episodes and "storms" of sort; the principle behind surviving them with minimal harm is very similar, albeit with one being physical and the other being mental.

Anyway, all that regrettably means I don't have a lot of worthwhile things to say this evening. I'm hoping I feel better tomorrow — and I'm hoping the cat doesn't keep me awake as much tonight as she did last night. I feel my struggles today may be related to this, though I can't blame her or be mad at her; she wasn't being malicious or deliberately trying to cause harm.

On that note, then, back to bed I go.

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