strictly platonic tentacle

To me the allure of Odysseus, and one of his great unique powers, is his ability to make EVERYONE feel like he's their friend. He can land on any shore, speak to any king, and to a man they'll come away feeling like: Odysseus understands. "You can talk to me (=you can listen to me)." THAT'S what true persuasive power looks like. It's Odysseus they send to negotiate with Achilles, sullen in his tent, and Achilles makes a special point of saying "fuck all of them and I hope they die, but know I have nothing against you, buddy." In a real way that I'm sure people have written papers about, it's arguable that Gatsby is one of the closest literary successors to Odysseus, in no small part bc he sits on a throne of lies, but you kind of love him for it—you even love the lies—bc of the way HE can uniquely make YOU feel. That's the only reason a character like this can survive & thrive the way he does. You have to fill in the blanks. This is Odysseus's great power to ME:

He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

This is, by definition, the polar opposite of Matt Damon's entire self-created public persona, bc Matt Damon is defined by his smarminess. He somehow manages to feel "ivory tower" without even being in the ivory tower. He attempts to isolate you with his unique accrued wisdom as an Actor who is so very and unusually thoughtful, and it's especially painful to actual knowers bc they know there's nothing THERE. There's just nothing to him imho. Matt Damon has never once said something that made me feel he Understands a goddamn thing, in any general or specific sense—much less that he understands ME. I swear to god his best role of all time, in terms of his character's personality aligning with my impression of his true self, was fucking LaBoeuf in True Grit. It's some kind of miserable irony that he's probably jorking it every night to being cast as Odysseus—ah yes, my actorly Wisdom has earned me this—when the true Odysseuses are lovably chewing up the scenery in Galaxy Quest. And yeah, I'll name names. Sam Rockwell could have been a great Odysseus. Gary Oldman could have been a great Odysseus. He's exceptionally hard to cast, but not impossible.

tldr: Imagine willingly turning off your TV and self-selected streaming services (=bards) and asking Matt Damon to recount his life's story for you in over a period of multiple days in your living room (=court); imagine what the lived experience of THAT would feel like. Now imagine asking Sam Rockwell to do the same.

What video game do you most regret not finishing?

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.

hmmmmmmm when i like something i tend to 100% it, and i don't tend to regret not spending time on things i don't like

i suppose Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies? i adore Failbetter's writing and art and atmosphere, but the format of those games just failed to grab me. little flecks of story interspersed in large bouts of meditative nothing. i wanted to be super into them (ive been playing Fallen London basically nonstop since october 2017) but i just wasn't.

I think that for Shepard, who is a healthy and strong woman, it would be difficult to accept the fact that the person she has fallen in love with is disabled. It must cause her to feel a sense of not understanding how to approach Joker, how not to physically break him or hurt his pride. For a girl like her, who is always used to charging straight ahead, this must all be incredibly difficult and confusing on a moral level. And since Joker is also a close friend to her, there must be a fear on her part of ruining everything between them. Especially since Joker can also be too harsh at times.

Hi there,

I think you're the same anon who's sent me a few different things lately, and I've been thinking about how to respond, because I haven't been sure how to!

You seem to go for more of an unrequited kind of take on Shoker, which is a bit of a different flavour of it from the one that I personally go for, myself! But, I encourage everyone to explore the characters they love in their own ways, and use that creativity to learn about themselves and others.

With this in mind, in response to your thoughts here, I will tell you a real story about my grandparents.

My grandfather was very well known in his day for being a suave, charismatic, handsome man. He was one of those men who could master anything he put his mind to; he spoke four languages, lived in three different countries throughout his life, and found a small fortune panning for gold in the Yukon. He built houses and also sold paintings on street corners. He was never lacking for selection, if you know what I mean.

My grandparents were living in Spain at the time they met. She, a Norwegian who also spoke three languages and lived in two countries, was finding her way in life again after the dissolution of her first marriage. A beautiful, headstrong woman that could best be described as a force of nature, she frequented the bar in their bustling town and was approached by many charming men. They would buy her drinks and chat her up for a while. But then, inevitably, they would catch sight of the braces on her legs and the crutches leaning on the wall next to her, and they would go a bit quiet all of a sudden and remember something rather urgent they just had to go and do. You see, my grandmother was a survivor of polio. She was more or less paralysed from the waist down.

So my grandfather comes in one evening and catches sight of this incredible woman with a smile that could make the whole room laugh along too, and they get to talking. The way she tells it, it was the best conversation she'd had in years. But an evening only has so many hours, and when it came time to head home, she steeled herself for the usual excuses as she reached over for her crutches. Apparently, my grandfather looked at the crutches in her hand, then down at the braces on her legs, then back up to her eyes. He smiled and said, "Right, where are we off to, then?"

They traveled the world together, married, and spent the rest of their lives together. In their latter years, my grandfather was her full time carer. When she had to be moved to a facility because she developed dementia and my grandfather was too frail to look after her, he still went the miles and visited her every day even through his own failing health until at last, he was admitted to the same care home, too. Last April, they died just 8 days apart. I miss them every day, and my heart will never again be quite so light as it was when they were in the world.

Love is not just something we feel. It is a decision that we make, and any difficulties that come with that decision are things that we sign on the dotted line for as simply being part of who that person is.

I only think it's a moral dilemma if one has some kind of "image" in their mind they feel compelled to maintain. Else, it's just a frank conversation with another adult. With my grandmother, and in my experience with most physically disabled people I've encountered, it was simply about allowing her the dignity of doing things for herself wherever possible. She wasn't shy about asking for assistance when it was needed, and telling you about things you had to keep in mind. She advocated for herself. I see that same thing in Jeff's character.

How not to break him? That's just logistics babey. That is literally addressed in the damn base game, in that ME3 conversation between Mordin and Joker you can overhear that's about him having sex with EDI. How to approach him, how not to hurt his pride, how not to "ruin" a friendship? Those are concerns that can crop up between ANY people in a relationship, regardless of their ability or disability. And as the OP said, if you want to explore these questions, you are perfectly free to do so. But they are by no means insurmountable obstacles or even significant hurdles that MUST be overcome before a relationship between these two characters can be considered at all.

Anon, the idea of the audience insert character gettin with a disabled guy seems to have scared you, enough that you had to voice your fears to a mod writer. Genuine query: why? Why do you think this character can date a man with telekinesis or an awkward alien girl or an ex-cop with a sexy voice or a terminally ill lizard, but having her date a man with a real-world medical condition is too much for your suspension of disbelief? Like you said, these are just your thoughts. If you would like to have different thoughts, I suggest reading stuff by disabled people about sex and dating and intimacy. Autostraddle's disability tag is pretty good. Maybe try this article on for size?

The location I would put her in doesn’t exist in the game yet, but I tried to do a bit of a background.

Personally I would understand if Penelope doesn’t actually show up in Hades 2, there’s so much going on in the game already, buuuut if she was there….

Based on this statement by Allegra + the fact that we know the final name must contain 7 letters, I've put together the following list of my top 7 guesses for the potential cast member to be the fourth member of the team, ranked from most likely to least likely, in my opinion. Everyone please add other guesses you might have!

Nive Nielsen - Silna

Sebastian Armesto - Charles Des Voeux

Greta Scacchi - Lady Jane Franklin

Charles Edwards - Alexander MacDonald

Vinnie Karetak - Koveyook

Johnny Issaluk - Netsilik Hunter

Ronan Raftery - John Irving