u/Robrogineer

I got diagnosed with PDD-NOS when I was about six years old, and have been in special ed until the end of high school.

I always had trouble relating to most autistics. I found that their difficulties, disposition, and needs simply did not line up with mine. So I've had quite a bit of trouble finding people with whom I can actually relate and connect over them.

It really annoys me that the diagnosis of PDD-NOS has been done away with, and now simply falls under the umbrella term of ASD, because I now have an even harder time finding people that experience their disorder like how I do.

When I was younger, my mother tried to constantly nudge me into seeking out autistic contacts through lodging groups and autism cafés, but I always found these people simply aggravating and obnoxious. Not to rail on them, it's not their fault, but being forced to deal with high support needs people was just a very unpleasant experience, especially as a young teen.

But I eventually found out that I can relate a lot better with people who were diagnosed with aspergers, because I could never find others with PDD-NOS.

I am more of a lurker here than anything, because I sometimes question whether it's right for me to speak about my experiences despite not being a diagnosed aspie, but it is refreshing to see people I can actually relate to nonetheless.

So I was wondering if there were other people with PDD-NOS in here who can relate to that experience.

I hate the Tower ending. It frankly defies logic just to be as depressing as possible because of the arbitrary "No happy endings in Night City." nonsense.

Being heavily hampered by years of muscle atrophy and being unable to have combat implants is already quite bad. But not only that, for some fucking reason V goes back to NC without any kind of bodyguards, or even a fucking gun, and gets clowned on by 2 gonk kids.

All of the characters turn their back on V, largely because V doesn't fucking tell them he's going away for brain surgery. Again, makes no sense, but on top of that, they all reply to V with so much venom that it frankly feels like character assassination. Especially Panam and Mitch. I can totally understand why Panam would be furious and wouldn't want to talk for a long while before she learns what happened, but the way Mitch talks to V is especially heinous.

I've heard people speculate that Panam is actually dead, and Mitch wants to save V the hurt. That kind of makes it better, but that's not what the game spells out. V has saved Mitch's life multiple times, was there for his best friend's funeral, and he doesn't even have the decency to have an actual goddamn conversation.

The thing that pisses me off the most is that all of V's assets get seized. Like, what the actual fuck? That's ridiculous. V is loaded enough to live the rest of his life comfortably, and all of it got seized because of fucking rent? Why the fuck would the NUSA not secure V's assets? Hell, why the hell wouldn't he make sure his assets are secure? I get why he wouldn't expect to be out for 2 years, but he shouldn't be that fucking gonk.

It tries way too hard to be bitter for no real reason to its own detriment.

Something that always confuses me is why there is so much hostility around discussing the definition of a roleplaying game.

To me, a role playing game is a game that lets you create your own character and choices that meaningfully impact the story.

Because that's what the term means in any other context like TTRPGs. I take games like Dungeons & Dragons as the baseline to then define what a video game RPG is.

But any and all discussion around this seems incredibly hostile to such a definition because of the games it excludes.

Yes, according to this definition, the vast majority of JRPGs are not RPGs, because they don't have any kind of character creation, dialogue choice, or impact on story.

Why is that a problem? I get that the term goes back a long way, but it really doesn't meet the criteria of beeing a roleplaying game, because there isn't any roleplaying to do.

And no, just because you control a character doesn't mean you're "roleplaying" as that character. Then every single video game where you control a character counts as an RPG, making the term completely useless.

To get back to the question in the title, why is this definition such a huge problem to people? Why is it a bad thing for certain games not to count as RPGs? Because as it is now, everything and anything gets called an RPG, making it downright impossible to find actual RPGs. Why is it a bad thing for certain games to be excluded from the genre? It's the whole point of genre names, to define a game and exclude it from other types of games.

The game hypes it up like it's the biggest job hotspot in NC, but there's like 1 actual job you get there beyond a few main quest moments.

I downright never come to the place, and it's a real pity. Would be cool if there was some kind of job board there or something.

During a recent trip to Paris, I purchased the wonderful Art Deco Complete, by Alastar Duncan, a very comprehensive and thorough book on Art Deco ranging from furniture, sculpture, graphic design, etcetera.

It is a delight to read thusfar, though it definitely takes some time to properly digest its contents.

However, what's notably absent from this book is Art Deco architecture, the thing that first attracted me to the style.

Are there any particular books that you would recommend me to seek out?

Johnny is fantastic, but imagine how much of a drama it'd be if there were a copy of Jackie's mind stuck in your brain, unwillingly slowly killing you.

For some reason, I never see this point raised whenever discussions about prisons and prison time comes up.

On the one hand, you have people who seem to believe we should abolish prisons, and criminals only need rehabilitation.

On the other, there are people who see prison as a punishment which needs to be cruel in order to deter crime.

However, neither of those are really what prisons are meant for first and foremost, and it taints the discussion.

As I said in the title, the primary function of a prison is to remove bad actors from society, in order to keep good actors safe. This is why it is fundamentally a bad thing to give short or no prison sentences to violent offenders.

For some reason, there is a significant cohort of people who think it's somehow cruel to put a violent criminal in prison. It isn't. Beyond any discussion of rehabilitation or punishment, it needs to happen in order to make sure they do not harm anyone else.

Too often these days do we see short-sighted empathy for violent criminals lead to greater harm done to society as a whole. A lot of people in the justice system and in politics have completely lost the plot on why we have prisons and prison sentences for violent crimes, and it's maddening.

"Is this criminal a bad actor? Will they be likely to inflict harm again if they're released back into the public?" This has to be talked about way more, and needs to be the primary thing that's put into consideration whenever a prison sentence is passed.

I'm entirely aware that it's a completely irrational thought, but it's something that irks me very often.

My whole life I've almost constantly been struggling with things that are actually useful, whilst being really good at recalling only the most useless information.

There's this itch in by brain that tells me that there's some kind of skill that the universe "owes" me to be good at with which I can actually make a living. It gets worse every year, because I've dropped out of 3 different colleges now because it turned out I just wasn't cut out for it.

Again, I understand completely that there's no real sense to it. But is this an experience anyone else shares?

It's really damn annoying that there isn't anything in-game that actually tells you what the difference is between weapon marks aside from one really broad description and a few number changes.

It's becoming a more and more prevalent talking point that younger people have little to no faith in democracy anymore, and it's something boomers just can't seem to wrap their mind around because they can't put themselves in the younger people's shoes.

From the perspective of a 20-something-year-old, all they see when they look at politics is a bloated bureaucratic mess that holds little more than the illusion of choice.

Even in Europe, the political world has stagnated. It's all the same neoliberal shitlibs getting elected by crusty old boomers over and over and over again, eroding our social welfare and investment in public infrastructure more and more every single year.

Consumer rights are getting worse, labour rights are getting worse, everything is unaffordable, third world migrants keep pouring in despite almost every single Western country having huge swaths of the population who are vehemently opposed to it, and no one is doing anything meaningful about it. Just keeping the status quo going to keep the boomers comfortable.

Look at what recently happened with the Stop Killing Games movement.

There was a huge push behind the movement, trying to appeal to the European Commission that the current legislation allows game companies to pull the plug on their games any time they want and make them completely unplayable, not only destroying a product the consumer paid for, but also destroying art, because these games become permanently unplayable unless it is reverse-engineered through community effort.

A petition was signed with millions of signatures, and the representative of the movement spoke at the commission.

But guess what happened?

The games industry lobby had a meeting with the Commission behind closed doors, without anyone from the Stop Killing Games initiative present, and the matter was dismissed. Just like that. All that effort and the immense popular support just gets dismissed, and there's almost nothing we can do about it.

How the fuck do you expect young people to put up with this? There are no real enforcement mechanisms in place to force politicians to uphold their promises, and referendums mean nothing when they can just get dismissed on a whim.

It takes a colossal effort on the part of the public to even get the mere attention of a governing body like the European Commission. There's mountains of bureaucracy and red tape to wade through to dissuade the public from bringing about any kind of change, and yet the governing body has practically zero responsibility to heed the will of the public.

The system has brought us almost no meaningful improvement whatsoever in the last two decades. It's been slowly eroding everything that made the West great while throwing us the occasional crumbs to keep us complacent.

How is anyone surprised that people are getting desperate and looking for alternatives?

The climate is going to change badly. It's already doing so. And Europe can't do anything about it.

The overwhelming amount of pollution is being done by countries that Europe has absolutely zero control over. But instead of doing the sensible thing and preparing for the worst, these obnoxious green parties just continue with their self-flagellating "eco-friendly" policies that cause nothing but discomfort and inconvenience for everyday people who hold no blame for what's happening to the climate.

Stop it with the papers straw bullshit and starts subsidising airconditioning and building nuclear power plants.

I swear, most of these "green" parties only care about the aesthetic of being good for the environment and don't give two shits about doing anything that's actually helpful. Otherwise they'd be strongly pro-nuclear and advocate for moving our industry back from China.