kfwyre's recent activity
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
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Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life
kfwyre (edited )Link ParentI always appreciate your thoughts too, Fae. And please know that even though I'm critical of this article, that doesn't extend to you. I can absolutely understand why people like you and...I always appreciate your thoughts too, Fae.
And please know that even though I'm critical of this article, that doesn't extend to you. I can absolutely understand why people like you and @patience_limited found value and insight in this. I have nothing but a deep and abiding respect for y'all.
It's possible he's seeing the targeted rhetoric described by his examples directly where my feed is only showing me the criticisms of it. And perhaps he isn't seeing more of what you describe similarly.
This, and your later specifics of what you see are a really good point. Are the three of us all even talking about the same thing, or are we all seeing our own particular limited slice of it and responding to that in kind?
Like, as someone who isn't on any social media besides Tildes, I have no doubt that I'm insulated from so much of this, especially the worst parts of it.
So, in a big sense, my weights on this particular issue aren't adequately calibrated to the social landscape in which we now live.
On the other hand, I'm a pretty strong believer in the idea that those social media platforms specifically raise the presence of hateful, conflict-driven stuff as an easy way of driving engagement. It undoubtedly works -- that root impulse is what prompted me to take over an HOUR out of my day to type out my original response! (Not saying that Tildes is outraged-based ā in fact, I love that it isnāt.) So, in that sense, the weights there are deliberately miscalibrated as well.
It's hard to find grounding on my own, much less a common grounding between multiple distinct perspectives.
I'm not saying this to blame anyone on those platforms or excuse anyone using those platforms to amplify awful content. Instead, I see it more as a structural factor I'm considering but don't really know how to account for.
Immediately after reading this article, I clicked on this one and felt a similar anger to the one I felt here, though that anger isn't aimed at the author but instead at the awful shit that she (and people like her) have to go through. My honest emotional response to that, in complete contrast with my comment here, was "ugh, fuck men" because, well, it's hard for me to see hateful, awful stuff like that and not have a target on which my anger needs to land.
I don't even really know where I'm going with this other than I'm just kind of thinking out loud and trying to honor the idea that this is a very difficult topic to talk about, with lots of different layers, inputs, and perspectives that we have to consider. It also hits at the core of our emotional centers and our identities. I spent over an hour doing what I see as defending men in my first comment only to turn around and immediately hate them moments later when faced with a different stimulus. This is a tough landscape to navigate.
I think the self-assured tone of my first comment is mostly a front, because really I lack confidence and certainty about complex, seemingly intractable problems like sexism. I'm a male and benefit from that significantly in my life, but I also attribute to sexism the homophobia I faced growing up and that nearly ended my life, so I know first-hand what it's like to feel the suffocating weight of its oppression.
One thing I do confidently know (and hopefully adequately showed with this comment) is that this difficult landscape requires a lot of time and energy to navigate. You are someone who willingly and repeatedly does that here. You put in an incredible amount of time and effort to address and discuss difficult topics, and you do so with a clear-eyed vision that I admire. Please know that your efforts don't go unnoticed or unappreciated. You're putting in the work and then some.
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Nominations Topic in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentCGA Announcement: 18 hours until nominations close! I was intending to do a 24 hour notice but got my times wrong. XD Notification List @1338 @Akir @ali @arctanh @AriMaeda @atomicshoreline @avirse...CGA Announcement: 18 hours until nominations close!
I was intending to do a 24 hour notice but got my times wrong. XD
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Nominations Topic in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentI see CGA as very much a "play it in a way that works for you" kind of space, which is to say: no restrictions! People can choose whichever version they want. I also think that can potentially...I see CGA as very much a "play it in a way that works for you" kind of space, which is to say: no restrictions! People can choose whichever version they want.
I also think that can potentially generate some interesting discussion in cases where there are major differences between versions, or if some people play a remaster/remake versus the original, etc.
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Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life
kfwyre (edited )LinkJulia Serano, in her book Whipping Girl, breaks sexism into two different components: Traditional sexism, which holds that femininity is inferior to masculinity Oppositional sexism, which holds...- Exemplary
Julia Serano, in her book Whipping Girl, breaks sexism into two different components:
- Traditional sexism, which holds that femininity is inferior to masculinity
- Oppositional sexism, which holds that men and women are rigid, mutually exclusive categories
Serano then goes on to examine how these forces enact transmisogyny, which is a transphobic misogyny that trans women specifically face.
I bring this up because "oppositional sexism" was an eye-opener for me. It named a phenomenon that I sort of always knew was there under the surface, but that I never really could put a name to.
Oppositional sexism has a lot of facets, but one of its most insidious is that it implicitly encourages a sort of gender-based score-keeping and tribalism. If you ever read something that treats gender like it's a zero-sum game, where advances for women mean oppression for men (or vice versa), then you're staring oppositional sexism in the face.
I lead in with this, because I feel like it's a primary flaw of this article. Here's the opening paragraph, emphasis mine:
My inbox, via The Boston Globe, tells me that men are opting out of college, and New Englandās campuses are missing them. It's a problem, it appears; one for the rest of us to solve, it appears; on behalf of those men, it appears. And the Sydney Morning Herald informs me that "two top podcasters have identified a global decline" and also a cause: "The problem, they say, is women." There's even a pull-quote. ā'A huge amount of men between the age of 15 and 50 will not pass on their genes. They will effectively die out of the gene pool...Should society intervene?' Steven Bartlett asked last year." Apparently men, and only men, are having trouble reproducing. Apparently this is a problem caused by women. Apparently it's for societyāthat's usāto solve this problem, on behalf of these men.
The author immediately frames the situation in oppositional terms: men vs. women, or men vs. "us." Of course, the author is also responding to podcasters who are doing the same thing, claiming women are the problem. The author is not alone in turning gender discussions into a men vs. women problem. It's far too common, and in fact it's, I believe, at the root of a lot of the things he's trying to address in this article.
The author then proceeds to sort of debunk this constructed idea that he admits isn't even fully formed in the first place. In the second paragraph, he notes that he didn't even read the articles he's responding to:
I want to be transparent about these pieces. They are both behind a paywall, and I didn't feel like paying to read them, so I don't know what's in them specifically, and I'm not linking to them. Perhaps these pieces have brand new and surprising lines of thought around their subjects, though I must confess I find it unlikely.
He walks this back by saying that he's responding to a general pattern he's witnessed and these are just a jumping off point, but even I, as someone who generally agrees with some of his broader points and would call myself a feminist, think that this is sloppy and off-putting. (Though, admittedly, a lot of my comments, including this one, follow a similar pattern, so it's genuinely unfair of me to fault him for it.)
Anyway, he then laboriously deconstructs the idea of a "male loneliness epidemic" in a very score-keepy way, which is where I think this article veers from misguided to outright problematic, in my opinion.
Jullia Serano wrote her entire book about transmisogyny because she wanted to identify a type of oppression specific to trans women. Part of the reason I used this is as an example is that it's a great way of framing sexism in a non-oppositional way. We can accept the existence of transmisogyny without downplaying or undervaluing the misogyny that cis women face. The same goes for, say, misogynoir and people of color. In all of these instances, the specific focus on identity illuminates a phenomenon that can otherwise go unseen, and the existence of one doesn't negate the other. Transmisogyny doesn't invalidate misogyny -- it's instead an important segment of it worth considering both on its own and also under its broader umbrella.
In progressive/feminist circles, this is called intersectionality, where we consider how different factors overlap and apply to different classes of people as well as the individuals within those classes.
So when the author laboriously rails against the idea of a "male loneliness epidemic" even existing, I see it as, essentially, a failure of intersectionality as a product of oppositional sexism. In a non-oppositional, intersectional model of sexism, we could see "male loneliness epidemic" as a potentially necessary, specific illumination of a particular corner of loneliness that isn't captured by the umbrella concept of "loneliness" on its own.
In an intersectional view, we'd understand that men are also harmed by sexism and that, as a widespread, societal force, we cannot boil its resolution down solely to the level of personal responsibility. This is why, we, as progressives, have discussions about systemic changes in the first place -- because we acknowledge that change isn't possible through individual action alone.
Furthermore, in order to discredit the idea of a "male loneliness epidemic," he uses some rhetoric that I find jarring and dishonest (italic emphasis in the original, bolded emphasis mine):
And loneliness is an interesting way to frame the complaintāfor complaint it is. The complaint is not a dearth of companionship, exactly. What the problem usually boils down to is a dearth of available sexual opportunitiesānot so much willing sex partners, as women who don't totally own their own bodies, and so therefore can't say "no" to sex so easily. Women should not be allowed to be voluntarily celibate, it seemsānot if it means a man might be involuntarily celibate, and not get the sex he has coming to him.
In pretty much everything I've seen about the loneliness epidemic in general, but also about the male loneliness epidemic specifically, there's been prolific discussion of screens, social media, parasocial relationships, loss of third places, increase in mental health issues, the impacts of COVID, etc. All of these have broad impacts which include men and are, in my mind, extremely valid structural things that we SHOULD be looking at.
But if we look at the author's last sentence, he is basically saying that the "male loneliness epidemic" is literally incel ideology that promotes the rape of women.
He does the same shift later, even more clearly this time:
In fact, the fact that I say these things instead of building paths of redemption is what is to blame for the abusive and destructive behavior of lonelyāthat is involuntarily celibateāmen.
Yes, there are too many people who buy into incel ideology that is explicitly hateful and harmful to women. I don't want to downplay that at all. It is horrific. However, I do think that taking that minority of individuals and framing them as indicative of men as a whole is also unjust. It makes his later points land better within his own scope, because, yes, undoubtedly women should have rights and men aren't owed sex, but a solution isn't a solution if a problem has been misidentified in the first place, and I feel that's what he's done.
I think in order to properly identify the problem, we have to stop thinking of men and women in oppositional terms and instead identify that men and women can both be lonely for valid reasons, and that those reasons can be different, and that it is far more likely that these phenomena are happening in tandem rather than because of each other. He comes close to this towards the end, eventually acknowledging that the loneliness of men and women are both "quite real". He identifies that patriarchy hurts both men and women, and that feminism can be a source of liberation with men.
This is where I agree with him, because feminism is one of the frameworks that gives us the language to look at the world and change it by structural means.
It's also why I find his "men need to work on themselves" to be a short-sighted and unfulfilling response. There is some truth to it, as there always is, because individual people have a large amount of agency in their lives, but the whole idea of agency in the first place is predicated on the existence of external factors that can limit it. Without acknowledging that men are also subject to this, we're back to a a very limited and I would argue incorrect framing of what patriarchy is and does in the first place.
I was going to end there, but then I paused on this for a bit, took a breather, and came back to it.
I realized that I was angry about something and I think I hid that anger behind my sort of distanced, clinical response to this piece.
So, I'm going to speak to my actual feelings now that I've thought about them.
Part of me doesn't like this article for all the reasons I said above, but I think what most bothers me about it is that the author's opinion towards men comes across as smarmy, dismissive, and ultimately condescending.
I think it's a failure of the author's empathy that he cannot understand that there are a lot of everyday men who aren't awful people who are hurting and lonely. I think it's a failure of the author's progressive stance that he uses the conservative canard of "personal responsibility" as moral absolution from empathy. I think his article comes across as patronizing because it fundamentally treats men as if they're incapable, unthinking beings who uncritically buy horrific incel ideology.
His experience doesn't match mine.
I know plenty of men who are lonely and who aren't monsters. I see it in my students, and I assure you many of them are not neck-deep in manosphere content. I also think that there are a TON of men who have done a TON of work on themselves and still are lonely because I think that sexism isn't the sole source of loneliness in life.
A big part of me hates writing stuff like this, because I don't like to respond in anger in the first place. Another part of me is trying to, well, put in the work to balance the call to action that anger can generate with a more measured fairness that aligns with my values. I've, admittedly, probably failed that ideal with this post.
In the interest of full transparency, and being honest about my feelings, I should admit that I think the anger comes from my own alignment with the author, rather than opposition to him. I see myself in him a bit. He identifies as a feminist and believes that men benefit from feminism. I do too! He's is tired of the broad pattern of gender discourse he's seen online and is responding to that landscape, just as I am.
I think our ideological closeness is what makes me so critical in the first place, because I see the potential in his words but think he fails to meet that potential. In fact, I think he actually does damage to the ideas that he's putting forth.
From my perspective, I feel that this piece uses disingenuous rhetoric that relies on men and women being put at odds and frames men in the worst possible way. I think he uses progressive ideals in regressive ways.
This is a hard thing to talk about because oppositional sexism is a baggage that we all carry. My defensive hackles are already up because I fear that someone will read everything I've written here and automatically assume that I'm speaking negatively about women or overlooking women's issues or unsympathetic to them because I'm focusing on men.
I promise you, in full earnestness: that is not my intention. To me, men and women are not in opposition and are in fact all living in this sexist soup we call a world. It doesn't mean that our problems are the same in type or magnitude, but I fundamentally reject the ideas that solutions for one create problems for the other and that turning off our empathy for either is a means of arriving at justice.
With this comment, I'm instead trying to illuminate a little corner of sexism that I think could use some light. I promise I'm not trying to put anyone else in darkness while doing so.
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Comment on Weekly thread for casual chat and photos of pets in ~life.pets
kfwyre Link ParentThis is such a beautiful tribute. Thank you for sharing her story with us.This is such a beautiful tribute. Thank you for sharing her story with us.
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Comment on Here are your choices for a self-hosted ebook server in ~books
kfwyre Link ParentI'm glad you're liking it! I pretty much willfully shill for BookFusion whenever I can because I love it so much. XD I'm also glad the TTS meets your needs! I keep hoping Apple will add a more...I'm glad you're liking it! I pretty much willfully shill for BookFusion whenever I can because I love it so much. XD
I'm also glad the TTS meets your needs! I keep hoping Apple will add a more Siri-style natural voice option (or BookFusion will add their own), as even
Ava (Premium)(which sounds the best to me) is still a touch robotic for my tastes.It does sync highlights, and you can export them (see here) though the caveat for that is that you can only do it one book at a time. As far as I can figure out, there's no way to export all highlights across all your books all at once.
Also, that linked article isn't quite up to date. It says it'll export them to CSV, but when I went to test it, I could choose between CSV, Markdown, HTML, PDF, and Readwise.
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Nominations Topic in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentIs this one still enjoyable if you havenāt played the previous games in the series?Is this one still enjoyable if you havenāt played the previous games in the series?
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Comment on Here are your choices for a self-hosted ebook server in ~books
kfwyre Link ParentItās not self-hosted or open source, but BookFusion might be a good replacement for you. It has all the features you mention and works cross-device. I frequently read on my PC, phone, and ereader,...Itās not self-hosted or open source, but BookFusion might be a good replacement for you. It has all the features you mention and works cross-device. I frequently read on my PC, phone, and ereader, and it works across all of them swimmingly.
The only caveats I have for it are:
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The TTS voices arenāt up to par. It uses the built-in Apple ones on my iPhone, so this might not be BookFusionās fault, but none of them come close to a natural-sounding voice.
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If you want it on an ereader, currently you have to get an Android-capable one (I use Boox devices). KOReader integration is on their roadmap, but itās not yet implemented.
Beyond those minor sticking points though, I absolutely love the platform. It now houses my full ebook collection (literally THOUSANDS of books). They have a Calibre plugin, so I do all of my staging of the files on my computer then use the plugin to sync it to their servers.
If you have any questions about it, let me know. Iām a very happy subscriber.
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Comment on She graduated from high school with honors but canāt read or write. Now sheās suing. in ~society
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Nominations Topic in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentAh, good catch! Thanks. I must have whiffed that one when making the new table. It's now updated.Ah, good catch! Thanks. I must have whiffed that one when making the new table. It's now updated.
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Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of February 15 in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentAbsolutely not! Keep āem coming! Also I went to buy this before the delisting and it turns out I already own it somehow. šAbsolutely not! Keep āem coming!
Also I went to buy this before the delisting and it turns out I already own it somehow. š
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Comment on CGA-2026-02 š¹ļøš REMOVE CARTRIDGE āļø Racing Lagoon in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentDefinitely agreed! I recently emulated Burnout 2 and it was still great. It's really the racing games from the mid-90s and before that are more miss than hit when returned to. Like, just look at...Definitely agreed! I recently emulated Burnout 2 and it was still great. It's really the racing games from the mid-90s and before that are more miss than hit when returned to. Like, just look at this draw distance in Test Drive Off-Road.
There are outliers though: Daytona USA and Screamer 2 still hold up pretty well IMO. I never played Outrun 2 but now you're making me want to give it a try!
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Nominations Topic in ~games
kfwyre LinkBoost: The Grue That Binds A lot of our games from the last batch were on the more modern side of "retro", so I like the idea of going in the opposite direction and getting REALLY retro with some...Boost: The Grue That Binds
A lot of our games from the last batch were on the more modern side of "retro", so I like the idea of going in the opposite direction and getting REALLY retro with some text-based titles.
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Comment on Slay the Spire 2 | Early Access trailer in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentNo idea! I just saw it in the trailer and think it's a great idea. I didn't even know there were co-op mods for StS1 until very recently.No idea! I just saw it in the trailer and think it's a great idea.
I didn't even know there were co-op mods for StS1 until very recently.
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Nominations Topic in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentIdeally, people would nominate their own Arcade Specials (like @J-Chiptunator just did!). I didn't intend for them to be something that we put together after the fact, but it ended up being a...Ideally, people would nominate their own Arcade Specials (like @J-Chiptunator just did!).
I didn't intend for them to be something that we put together after the fact, but it ended up being a necessity during the last round because I got FAR more nominations than I was expecting. Creating ad-hoc Arcade Specials was a way of paring down the list. I actually felt quite bad about doing this, because I feel like I "buried" some nominations that people were eager about by pairing them up with other games.
I used HLTB times to make Arcade Specials, but there's a definite flaw in that methodology, pointed out by fount of retro knowledge and wisdom @vili here:
I would say that HowLongToBeat is not always a very good source for older games. Sure, you can probably play Zork through in 2.5 hours, if you know what you are doing or just follow a walkthrough. But if left to your own devices, it will probably take weeks. And may well be impossible without a hint book.
Note that the website also says that you can beat Super Mario Bros in 2 hours. I challenge anyone to do that going in cold and without using save states! This is one of the major changes in how games function now compared to how they did 30-40 years ago. Nowadays, a game often contains 100 hours of content, of which you play 50. Back in the day, games contained 2 hours of content, of which you also played 50.
A lot of older games are relatively quick when played with a guide/save states, but a casual, non-directed playthrough might take, say, ten times that. I'm someone who would just use a guide for the convenience, but I know there are people participating that want that more time-intensive retro experience as well.
With regards to February, you're absolutely right that I made the wrong call. We'll get it right next time!
In all honesty, placing Racing Lagoon and Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru last was a bit of a hedge on my part. I wasn't sure whether CGA would actually keep going or kind of fizzle out over time, so I put the more "difficult" to acquire/play games on the back end. I liked the idea of the opening months being more accessible in hopes of building momentum.
I like the idea of having designated "revisits", but I'm thinking limiting it to a specific game is too narrow? Maybe in months where a very short game is picked, we have a "catch up" month where people can play an older game they didn't get a chance to? Or maybe we just schedule one month each year for that with no new game?
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Nominations Topic in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentYeah, I'm not sure if the lobbying round will change anything. The reason I wanted to do it was that there was a big friction point last time: for the voting round, people could lobby under their...Yeah, I'm not sure if the lobbying round will change anything.
The reason I wanted to do it was that there was a big friction point last time: for the voting round, people could lobby under their own ballot, but that meant that comments were scattered around under different parent comments, instead of being grouped by game. My vision for the lobbying topic is that someone can really sell everyone on a game and generate a discussion about it prior to the voting.
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Nominations Topic in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentFebruary's being on the 25th makes sense. I liked the simplicity of having it be the same day every month, but one outlier is easy enough to manage.February's being on the 25th makes sense. I liked the simplicity of having it be the same day every month, but one outlier is easy enough to manage.
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Nominations Topic in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentI often forget that not everyone lives here like I do. š I'll extend them, especially because, unlike last time, I'm not getting inundated with nominations. That was also part of the reason I gave...I often forget that not everyone lives here like I do. š
I'll extend them, especially because, unlike last time, I'm not getting inundated with nominations. That was also part of the reason I gave a shorter window -- to have a definitive cutoff if we were getting too many.
We're not under a time crunch since we still have March queued up, so I'll double everything:
- Nominations (96 hours)
- Lobbying (48 hours)
- Voting (96 hours)
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Comment on Nine dead after shooter opens fire at Canadian high school in ~news
kfwyre LinkChatGPT-maker OpenAI considered alerting Canadian police about school shooting suspect months agoChatGPT-maker OpenAI considered alerting Canadian police about school shooting suspect months ago
ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said Friday it considered last year alerting Canadian police about the activities of a person who months later committed one of the worst school shootings in the countryās history.
OpenAI said last June the company identified the account of Jesse Van Rootselaar via abuse detection efforts for āfurtherance of violent activities.ā
The San Francisco tech company said it considered whether to refer the account the Royal Canadian Mounted Police but determined at the time that the account activity did not meet a threshold for referral to law enforcement. OpenAI banned the account in June 2025 for violating its usage policy.
Destiny 2
I talked about starting this out last week. My thoughts are slightly more refined now that I've had more time to play it.
In general, I trend towards smaller indie games, so it's rare that I play something as big budget as this. The game is dripping with dollar signs. The graphics are beautiful. The environmental design is top notch. The sound design is excellent. The animations are fluid. The gunplay feels amazing. The color and lighting are striking. It's got this very polished, very premium feel that is eminently satisfying.
The game feels like what Borderlands would be if it took itself seriously. It's got big contiguous areas with fight set pieces and bosses and lots of different guns that randomly drop for you. It's repetitive, but the core shooting play is enjoyable so I don't mind the repetition that much.
It's, of course, also an MMO, and I'm doing my best to ignore that and trying to play it as a single player campaign that other people happen to be in. I will admit that I do like joining in the random public events that are on rotation, but I like these specifically because they're drop-in and non-committal. I'm less fond of the forced matchmaking squad missions that you can't play solo, but thankfully these are few and far between.
Last week I talked about being baffled because new player onboarding is terrible. I'm less baffled now, but that's basically because I do a lot of looking things up while I'm playing, essentially giving myself my own tutorials as I go. To its credit, the game does explain some mechanics to you, but it's not great. There's still a lot I don't know though. Like, I still have no idea why all gear is at 300 for me and doesn't change. I'm just kind of rolling with it in hopes that eventually it'll make sense or I'll unlock something higher.
Now, if the game isn't great at onboarding you to its mechanics, it's absolutely terrible at doing it narratively. Early on I got a cutscene that seemed to be a rapid summary of the game's major plot points. It had all these seemingly "big" moments that I had absolutely no context for. I then learned that, if you travel to different planets, you get cutscenes for the expansion associated with those planets. So, in my early game "hmmm, let's go here and see what it's like" experimentation I managed to ruin pretty much ANY potential narrative payoff by hitting expansions out of order.
This is to say nothing of the fact that you literally can't play the beginning of the game anymore, so it's nearly impossible for me to get invested in its world and lore because its exposition has been completely excised.
It's a shame, because, as previously mentioned, the game's polish and quality are quite high. The cutscenes I've watched (well, the ones that aren't a series of tiny clips frankensteined together into a summary reel) are really quite good. Beautiful art direction. Striking imagery. Good voice acting. Cool sci-fi concepts. I would have loved to be able to start from the beginning and work my way through.
I intended to start with the Shadowkeep campaign, which is the oldest one that's still available, but in attempting to do this, I think I somehow ended up playing the closing mission of the previous one, Forsaken. I met a fast-talking, Deadpool-ish character named Cayde who was in the middle of some big prison riot, played through the mission, and quickly realized that it was definitely the end of a story arc.
It was very cool, but it was also very disorienting to essentially play only the final mission of a campaign. I was finally able to actually start Shadowkeep, but figuring out how to do this took me way too long. I really shouldn't have to be searching for online tutorials about how to start the game off, but Destiny 2 is, uh, rather averse to letting you play old content. Like, it's there in the game (well, some of it š), but it's kind of buried and the game does its best to push you towards its current expansions. At one point the game just straight up dumped me into the opening mission of the most recent Renegades campaign and I had to manually exit out from it.
If the core gameplay weren't so good, I probably wouldn't put up with this nonsense, but I really do enjoy the gunplay. Fights are fun. They're often quite intense. I'll beat a boss only to feel every muscle in my body fully relax at the end -- I hadn't realized how tense I was until it was over.
I also love the setting. I'm a sucker for sci-fi, so planets and space and alien ruins are absolutely my jam.
This is a admittedly a weird comparison to make, but the game reminds me of my car (a Chevy Bolt).
I utterly love my car. It drives amazingly. I genuinely have zero complaints about it. But, I kind of hate Chevy. They push OnStar relentlessly and sell my driving data and are just generally sort of an uncomfortable, partially predatory umbrella under which my amazing actual vehicle sits. Destiny 2 feels a lot like that: an amazing game underneath the partially predatory umbrella of a live-service, free-to-play MMO.