CrazyGrape's recent activity
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Comment on Starfield system requirements are out on Steam in ~games
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Comment on Any people who do not consider themselves part of the "community"? in ~lgbt
CrazyGrape Link(This ended up being a longer comment than I intended, and it probably goes off the rails of the topic a bit, but at this point I've already written it down and I'd rather share it than abandon...(This ended up being a longer comment than I intended, and it probably goes off the rails of the topic a bit, but at this point I've already written it down and I'd rather share it than abandon it:)
I would say, I like that the communities exist, but I do not find myself actively going out of my way to be a part of them, especially in meatspace. Certain online spaces with memes and such I enjoy participating in or scrolling through, and they're usually good fun despite the problematic elements that come from some of them. One-on-one, I relate to a lot of people "in the community", especially now that I know which aspects apply to me, how they apply, and where I can find the more top-level comraderie where the lower levels don't line up. To answer the question directly, I guess I do consider myself "in the community" but more often in the periphery than the center.
I dunno, I feel a lot of times like I didn't have the opportunity to consider and explore my identity growing up, because of most of what was on my plate and the lack of varied, positive exposure to have as role models. I was vaguely able to make do and tolerate my life growing up, so I didn't really take as much of a chance to step back and question a lot of the assumed-defaults at the time. It wasn't until after I graduated high school and moved out that I really started to analyze my sexuality and gender identity.
One of the barriers was that I didn't identify with popular conceptions of the gay/queer community and the wider "casual/hookup" culture it seemed to carry with it, because the way I felt attraction to others just felt different from people both same-sex and opposite-sex attracted of my assigned gender. I kind of acknowledged a latent bisexuality at some point during adolescence, but it was characterized by the thought "well, I'm not against the idea of me being with a boy, but I've only ever been attracted to girls" but then I struggled a lot with forming relationships because the "script" of how it's supposed to work and who's supposed to make the moves just felt... wrong somehow? I just wrote it off as a personal issue to work past and that I had other things to work on, which to be fair to myself, ended up being an accurate assessment.
Luckily I was able to avoid bullying in school for the most part, I guess I was pretty good at diffusing situations or just "not feeding it" (at any rate, I don't recall being called any pejoratives). I attribute the relative lack of conflict to part of why I don't carry around nearly as much internalized guilt that a lot of LGBTQ+ folk deal with, especially regarding instilled religious beliefs, as I was able to dismantle most of the Judeo-Christian Values™ dogma in my own mind long before everything else became a question that felt worth exploring.
Looking back, there was a lot more there than I realized regarding what groups I hung out with and where I felt most welcome. It typically ended up being "the outcast/misfit" table at lunch, which I accepted and we kept to ourselves and the rest of the school mostly kept to themselves as well. Turns out a large portion of my friend groups ended up coming out as gay/lesbian/bi and/or trans as the years went by, but I unfortunately fell out of touch with most of them since my family frequently moved and I attended different schools.
Coming to terms with myself came with a lot of unlearning of previous beliefs, educating myself with what resources I could find online, and a lot of stress that is partially ongoing to this day as I work a job where coming out could affect its stability or negatively affect the way I'm treated by coworkers (which has come at the cost of longer term burnout and mental health issues). Unfortunately I think the stress/anxieties are pretty engrained into my general mental operation at this point, and it's probably going to take a lot of work to move past that. At any rate, finding local support groups has helped a ton, even if I don't say much and just listen to other people share their own experiences.
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Comment on More say birth gender should dictate sports participation in ~lgbt
CrazyGrape Link ParentThe thing that really gets me with all of this is how the ire gets directed at the trans athletes directly. You can make the argument for requiring medical transition for X amount of time before...The thing that really gets me with all of this is how the ire gets directed at the trans athletes directly. You can make the argument for requiring medical transition for X amount of time before allowing one to participate in Z division, but I really don't see what the harm is for sports on a sub-competitive level as long as there's not a clear imbalance that undermines everyone else's fun, which, hey: that's what sports are supposed to be about! On a case by case basis, you deal with people who make the environment unfair or unsafe.
Trans athletes should not be harassed when they go out of their way to ensure they are following competitive sports organization guidelines. Lia Thomas abided by the NCAA rules before competing in the Women's division, and if there were a productive discussion on the matter, it should be on whether the NCAA rules need to be revised; instead, we get laws being written based on gut reactions and gender essentialist views that stem from religious beliefs. A reasonable discussion is science-based, coupled with reasonable judgement calls on what actually determines an "unfair advantage", but the line of most of these conservative lawmakers falls down to chromosomes and what gender one is assigned at birth, ignoring the myriad of factors that influence how a person develops into a unique individual over time.
All that said, unfortunately, testosterone is a performance enhancing drug for most physical activities. Luckily, we have a pretty wide body of research on its effects, which have been used to make participation recommendations and used by organizations to set guidelines. Some of those guidelines on blood testosterone levels have ended up excluding many cis black women from competitive athletics even to this day, but that's a whole other topic.
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Comment on Thoughts on making Tildes groups more independent in ~tildes.official
CrazyGrape Link ParentMerging as in, filtering a specific post that gains traction up into the main group, and potentially beyond that onto the front page? One thing that could be interesting is a more organic form of...Merging as in, filtering a specific post that gains traction up into the main group, and potentially beyond that onto the front page?
One thing that could be interesting is a more organic form of crossposting that allows you to concurrently view and interact with comments from separate posts with the same link. I'm not sure how feasible that would be to implement or how useful it would be in practice, but I could see use cases in allowing comment-level discussions to be filtered or merged by group interest (as some different communities may view the post under a different lens). This could potentially keep the broader site community more connected and let users see from which communities certain discourse is coming from (assuming the comments would be marked as such).
And if a user has a certain group filtered out, they don't see those comments (or see them under a collapsed/hidden/filtered spoiler)
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Comment on Thoughts on making Tildes groups more independent in ~tildes.official
CrazyGrape Link ParentThe granularity would be very useful, especially if the feature is intuitive to use. You could filter out sub-level content you don't want, and simultaneously filter in sub-level content from a...The granularity would be very useful, especially if the feature is intuitive to use. You could filter out sub-level content you don't want, and simultaneously filter in sub-level content from a top-level subject you'd otherwise have little interest in.
I could see myself subscribing to specific game subgroups, but honestly the top-level group ~games is such a broad topic it feels weird to post niche content to. Perhaps that's a learned notion to try and work past, but you compose a work differently when you're making it for your ingroup vs for a wider audience.
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Comment on Thoughts on making Tildes groups more independent in ~tildes.official
CrazyGrape Link ParentI think especially with the group+subtag system, if that's organized properly one should be able to pretty seamlessly narrow down what kind of community they're looking for, as well as being able...I think especially with the group+subtag system, if that's organized properly one should be able to pretty seamlessly narrow down what kind of community they're looking for, as well as being able to merge feeds together (or separate them apart) as desired. I think something akin to multireddits or adjustable feeds in a "pivot table" style format could be fun to mess around with.
Say, for instance, you have a group that is specifically designed to be subtagged, or maybe even can't be posted to without one, such as for local city communities. What comes to mind is something like ~local.<insert_city_name> to collectively group those posts under an umbrella for organization purposes. Moderation would make more sense at the root group level until any specific subgroup grows past the critical mass needed to become its own niche community.
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Comment on Not entirely sure how to fill the void Reddit has left in ~talk
CrazyGrape Link ParentRight, though even if they become technically reopened by force, if all of the high quality, content producing users have left, those communities will become shells of their former selvesRight, though even if they become technically reopened by force, if all of the high quality, content producing users have left, those communities will become shells of their former selves
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Comment on Not entirely sure how to fill the void Reddit has left in ~talk
CrazyGrape Link ParentI believe that, for the foreseeable future, appending "reddit" to the end of searches will still be the best way to get answers on various technical subjects. Unfortunately, right now it's still...I believe that, for the foreseeable future, appending "reddit" to the end of searches will still be the best way to get answers on various technical subjects. Unfortunately, right now it's still the best knowledge source because other sites have to build up their back catalogue of user questions and helpful, to-the-point answers.
The closest thing to this I remember in the past was StackOverflow for programming questions, but the site eventually became rather unusable with the infamous "this question has already been answered elsewhere; locked", often without that mod/user providing a link to the answered topic. Even when a link was provided, it was often to a similar-but-different question and leaving me SOL in my highly specific search.
Reddit came in and filled that void as a lot of site communities slowly got inundated with repeats that got ignored and indexed because Reddit had an organic culture of helping provide genuine answers for those who knew what they were doing, helping motivated learners get started, and only really downvoting lazy and/or entitled content. That plus linking users to threads that have been answered and then not locking the thread immediately so OP had a chance to respond and confirm, maybe even ask follow-up questions that were useful, was a godsend.
Apologies, I got carried off there a bit, but maybe there's something we can learn from that culture in fostering what will become replacement Q&A knowledge hubs.
My suggestion for now would probably be to still use Reddit in queries, but visit links through cached pages if your current search engine provides them (Startpage has this feature, I'm pretty sure Google does as well). If there's useful info in the threads, it can still be gathered without directly giving the site traffic, albeit still at the cost of promoting Reddit in the search algorithms.
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Comment on Is anyone else just fed up with companies being greedy? in ~talk
CrazyGrape Link ParentI think a big thing as well on the greedy behaviors is that, because of the free-for-all that is our deregulated markets, an individual company that is fair and honest goes against a hostile tide....I think a big thing as well on the greedy behaviors is that, because of the free-for-all that is our deregulated markets, an individual company that is fair and honest goes against a hostile tide. Such a company will inevitably become overtaken by companies that do whatever they can think of to increase profits and minimize costs, given that they don't completely disenfranchise their workers from being productive, and given enough time for the two companies to compete on the market. The company that cozies up to the local politicians in exchange for favors, for instance, gets a massive advantage compared to a direct competitor of similar size that "does everything right". The greediest get rewarded most because the not only is the system designed to reward it, but those who succeed eventually find themselves in the position to tweak the system even more in their favor through lobbying, propaganda campaigns, and straight-up ignoring laws if the fine for getting caught is less than the profit generated by it.
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Comment on Linux gamers? If so, what games? in ~games
CrazyGrape Link ParentThat's very good to know! I remember trying FFXIVlauncher and the app itself worked, but I had issues logging into my account and getting the game to actually launch. This was at a point where I...That's very good to know! I remember trying FFXIVlauncher and the app itself worked, but I had issues logging into my account and getting the game to actually launch. This was at a point where I did not have an active sub but they had a free play weekend, and that may have contributed to my problems.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the issues have better documented fixes now or 'just work', and also if I just ended up doing something dumb trying to play without a subscription on an existing account (though I haven't finished ARR yet, and I've heard but never verified that the game is now playable for free up to that point)
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Comment on Linux gamers? If so, what games? in ~games
CrazyGrape (edited )LinkI've been playing Path of Exile, Overwatch, and Rocket League for the most part, with bits of Terraria, DRG, whichever else sounds fun. Lutris and Steam/Proton are amazing, though depending on...I've been playing Path of Exile, Overwatch, and Rocket League for the most part, with bits of Terraria, DRG, whichever else sounds fun. Lutris and Steam/Proton are amazing, though depending on your distro you may need to follow some first time setup guides. There are some odd issues that come up from time to time but they're usually fixable. Admittedly, however, some of them took me a long time to figure out.
For instance, I get a weird bug with Battle.net and have to reinstall it in Lutris every time launcher itself has a software update; I can't just let it update when it asks me to, but reinstalling it to the same location from Lutris works with no issues because the latest version gets re-downloaded. I can update games (i.e. Overwatch 2) inside the launcher with no issues. Setting up Battle.net for the first time was very involved as well because I was missing about a dozen or so libraries that were under different package names than usual for my Linux distro.
On Steam, the only title I've had issues with so far is AimLabs, which refuses to work no matter what I do. Everything else has worked pretty much without issue, and ProtonDB is a great resource to see what's worked for other people.
Bear in mind I've made things harder on myself because I use a more involved distro that requires you to set up everything yourself. I wouldn't be surprised if the experience were much smoother on Mint or a similarly user-friendly distro.
Edit: reading some other comments here, I now remember I did try to install FFXIV and it just wasn't working at all, at least not through the steam launcher. I've heard that the standalone version of the game works but I'd have to re-buy the game, to my knowledge, because of how Square Enix has the game set up on different platforms
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Comment on Mysterious, thoughtful games? A genre I can't define in ~games
CrazyGrape LinkAxiom Verge kind of fits this description from a plot-based perspective, but it's a metroidvania that's actually fairly difficult at points. Definitely has elements of the existential dread as...Axiom Verge kind of fits this description from a plot-based perspective, but it's a metroidvania that's actually fairly difficult at points. Definitely has elements of the existential dread as well.
Environmental Station Alpha is another metroidvania that I absolutely loved exploring despite the extremely minimal graphics, though it's brutal past some point in the later stages and I haven't finished it as a result.
Manifold Garden has basically no plot but I found the puzzles pretty satisfying (for the most part) and the visuals of certain areas were breathtaking. I'm not sure if I'd put it in the same genre but it scratched a similar itch for me.
I don't really know if these fit the ticket very well but it's hard to properly grasp what you're referring to because I don't know if we have a proper, well-defined term for it. There's definitely something there though. One thing that tends to drive games especially like Outer Wilds is that you can only really play them once, because the learning is a core element of the gameplay. Once you know what's going on and crack the formula, you can't really go back which makes the experience all the more special.
In that sense where you can only have the "first time" experience once, a lot of games are like that if you look through them under the right lens. Minecraft, for instance, was at one point pretty engaging to learn all of the crafting recipes in the game (before this was unfortunately trivialized with "item selection" menus by the console editions, and eventually the PC versions as well). It was a fun element that made let's plays of the game entertaining, because you got to watch people stumble through what you also dealt with at some point.
Well, you should still be able to return it through Steam regardless of if you pre-ordered it, unless I'm misinformed about how the return policy works? As long as you don't have more than like 2 hours playtime Steam should accept a return mostly with no questions asked, and they'll usually accept it with a bit more playtime but it gets somewhat involved with customer support.
That said, a lot of game studios front-load all of their resources and polish towards the beginning of a game if they're under a crunched schedule, so you don't see the jank until well past the typical return window. Steam has made exceptions for particularly bad software though, CP2077 being a noteworthy example for how spectacularly poor the quality was at launch. I don't know what the dev timeline for Starfield was like in the slightest, but I would hope 25 years is enough time to do it right (though Cyberpunk was also in development for over 10 years or something)