You don't question my professional decision-making unless you bring receipts to the table. If you're going to try to vibe-argue me in my area of expertise I will fucking dismantle you publicly. Bring receipts and I will listen.

I'm in the process of removing my parents from my life.

I'm also going in to have low key life saving surgery in an hour and a half, but the thing with my parents feels bigger.

I'm ... ah ... in old-timey terms Kinsey 2. I think the kiddies would call me "pan".

Not gonna lie, I think both of those things might turn out to be really important...

I love this. I'm the same being in regulatory services. I get talked down to a lot by different sexes and cultures because I'm POC and female. They can try to take me down, but I dish it out just as hard if not harder, and with a smile.

I'm going to share two really big ones for me that I'm still struggling with:

Saying no and saying it firmly.

Oversharing. No is no, and I don't owe anyone an explanation for anything. If an awkward silence follows, then it's them and not me.

Well, SO and I have very strict rules about bringing new people into the relationship.

Do you play tabletop games? RPGs, board games, card games?

A good sweet smile while you rip out their guts and hang them as garlands around their neck (metaphorically speaking … mostly) is really good for generating fear.

Hey, I hope you're feeling ok, after the surgery! Wishing you a speedy and peaceful recovery, lovely! Sending hugs and love in solidarity for what you're going through with your parents, too. I can relate.

Reminding myself that I am also a person with needs, that are just as important to have met. More so, in fact, than everyone else's, because I won't be filling anyone's needs if I keep driving myself into the ground.

I'm in a relationship that for much of its duration was quasi-open. (COVID-19 put a bit of a crimp into the open parts, and SO and i have settled into something that is de facto monogamous, but not by inclination, more by practicality.) And yes, it's really hard to get other people to accept that. The notion that people can love and have relationships outside of a state- or religion-sanctioned relationship baffles people.

Definitely establish that boundary. Make it clear and ideally find someone who shares your standards, not just "accepts" them. You need someone who bellyfeels what you feel.

Fluxx is loads of fun! And if you mean "story games" I've got FATE, Spark (and its descendants) and StoryEngine on my shelf (some of the very few games that I have physical copies of).

This one is so hard and so important! I also struggle with this. It's on them and not you :)

Thank you!
They removed my breast because I had the pre-stages of breast cancer and the lumps were growing fast. So it's better to lose a breast than to possibly not be here in a couple of years. Feels weird af to suddenly only having one boob, but I'm so relieved that it's gone. Even if I look deformed now.

As for the whole parents thing, I'm very sorry you can relate. That is something I wouldn't wish on anyone.

I hope you are free of yours as well. I had to wait until now to get rid of mine because I was afraid they would turn my siblings against me if I disobeyed them too much. I have wanted to cut contact with especially my mother since 2010, but my love for my siblings and niblings outweighed my disgust for her. Luckily they all see her for what she is now, and I have also finally allowed myself to admit that my father isn't much better either.

When I'm a bit better, we plan on calling my dad and telling him that I'm out and then I'll send him a long letter where I explain why it is happening now and what the past 17 years have been like for me and that I love my father even though I despise how he has treated my siblings and niblings and to some extent myself. I have nothing to say to my mother, so she won't get a letter. I know that neither of them will take my letter seriously. They will pick it apart and argue everything, but I don't really care. It's for me, anyways. I'm just very happy that they don't get to turn my siblings on me. It took almost two decades of playing the game, but I somehow got everything I wanted despite having long since admitted defeat and accepted that I would never be free until my mother is dead. Thankfully I won't have to wait that long.

Sorry for long comment. But yeah, I feel so relieved and free. If you're still trapped by your parents, I hope you find your way to freedom someday too ❤️ you deserve it!

You're not wrong, friend, haha. I hope you have a lovely evening. 🤗

Spark is like collaborative story-telling where the dice come out when people disagree on what happens. It focuses on characters having their beliefs challenged and either confirmed or altered. It's one of my absolute favourite games. It's currently available for free (Genesis of Legend puts their games into the public domain after a decade).

I'm split down the middle between fairly crunchy trad games and games that are effectively improv with dice (or in their solo incarnations, writing with dice).

For the first variety, the golden king of all my games remains Chivalry & Sorcery (currently in its fifth edition; I primarily played second). I was also a big fan of a game called Rolemaster, though a later spin-off of it called HARP was more my speed later on (and, in fact, is one of the few games that I brought with me when moving to China).

For the second variety, I love Spark and its offshoots, especially Sig: Manual of the Primes. And I adore FATE, but specifically the Accelerated Edition.

Especially when they tell me to smile... I wrap them around my own neck. 😘☠️

"Crunchy" just means "lots of rules" and Pathfinder is pretty much a crunchy trad game. Crunchy games can be insanely complex (like Powers & Perils) by having completely different systems for each and every thing (old school AD&D was this way too, as was Chivalry & Sorcery in its first and second editions) or they can have unified game systems where one or two simple core mechanisms are used in different ways for the rules (C&S from the third edition onward qualifies, as does D&D form the third edition onward, and its offshoots like Pathfinder).

I do occasionally find people to play with (including SO, obviously) but yes, my RPG playing is at an all-time low since I first encountered them in '78. I don't play online because I despise computers enough that I really don't want them in my hobbies.

You can get the rules to Spark and FATE (in several editions: Core, Accelerated Edition, and Condensed) for free if you want to see what the flavours are like.

100%. I read somewhere that at 7 seconds, the silence becomes really awkward and more often than not, someone will break the silence. My ass of a director uses silence as a tool to get information from people.

I used it back on him, and we had a staring contest. He doesn't stop to chat anymore. Most definitely a win for me. He was a manipulative, backstabbing POS.

Nothing local, no. Just a few people I can get together with sporadically.

I went no contact with my Mom. Our relationship has never really been good, when I was 4 she left my dad who got primary custody of me and my siblings. From then on I only stayed with her every other weekend. At first I was super excited to spend time with her but that dwindled quickly as she spent most of that time drinking with her friends or drinking alone. She often drove with me in the car while drunk which scared me a lot and she got a few DUIs to the point she got a breathalyzer installed in her car. That didn't stop her though as she would just have me or my siblings blow into it so she could continue drinking and driving. This was consistent my entire childhood. There was even one night when she was plastered and trying to tell me that my dad never wanted me, I was 10 at the time, I don't even think she remembers that night but I sure do. I have a lot of trauma from her drinking which made it difficult for me to be around people drinking for awhile, I'm past it now but it took a lot of time.

She always described me as her golden child too since I never got in trouble so she "never had to worry about me" which is true because she never really thought about me it feels like.

When I was in my twenties she actually cut back on drinking which I was very happy about but we still didn't really know each other that much. I also came out as trans during this time to which I got the "I need to mourne the loss of my son" treatment which sucks to hear because I had finally stopped feeling depressed and suicidal when I came out so I was very happy while she would rather me be depressed again.

The final straw for me was learning she voted for Trump. Not only am I a trans woman but I was also a federal worker and my wife works at a predominantly immigrant elementary school. I just cant handle how much her decisions have hurt me over my life and I wanted it to stop. So I just blocked her and refused to talk with her anymore. Her last words to me was that I would understand one day why she voted for Trump and that everything would be better because of him.

The worst is she's having health issues and just had heart surgery and now I feel terrible that I am not there for her despite the fact she's never been there for me.

Sorry I know its really long but I really needed to vent about this.

The feeling of guilt even though you know you have set a reasonable boundary is intense. There is a incredible social power to the assumption that you owe your parents something, even if they fall to meet every responsibility of parenthood. I feel the same way with my dad.