cobysev

It’s another name for fairy. They have all sorts of types and behaviors depending on the mythology they’re from. Some are tricksters who kidnap children from their homes and eat them or turn them into fairies, others are helpful forest or elemental sprites, some are demons, and some are changelings, taking the form of humans or animals whenever it suits them. As well as some other variations of fae depending on their origin.

One of the more common beliefs is that, if you give your name to a fae creature, they own your name and thus you, giving them complete control over your body. Which is why you never give out your name to a fae. They might march you off into the woods against your will and you’ll never be seen again.

Another common belief is that fae can’t touch iron, so it’s a good ward to keep them away. Hence Columbo never carrying a gun.

They’re magical creatures, so the fact that Columbo seems to always be where he’s needed or produce what he needs from his pockets seems almost like fairy magic.

?:)

• Epic wants to be Steam’s direct rival, so their storefront has many of the same features, but it’s not as popular within the community. I honestly have no opinion about them.

I have an opinion on them. They’re a terrible company with anti-gamer friendly policies.

I have no problem with competition. It keeps businesses legit and cheap/reasonable for consumers. Heck, GOG does a great job as a companion storefront with Steam.

Epic Games could have tried to be competitive too and provide a similar or better platform for games. But instead, they wanted to corner the market and steal gamers from Steam, so they started pushing exclusivity contracts with publishers. New games would come to only their storefront for the first year, then release to other PC storefronts after that.

Then they started publishing games themselves, which kept them isolated to their storefront indefinitely. Even game series that were released to other consoles and PC platforms suddenly had a sequel that was stuck on Epic Games. I’m looking at you, Alan Wake II.

Or worse, buying up IPs and removing them from other storefronts, like Fall Guys and Rocket League.

They also tried to pull people in by releasing a new game for free every week (even AAA titles!), which was actually the coolest thing they ever did. But it doesn’t excuse all their other anti-gaming practices. If anything, it made me feel dirty using their platform.

I have never given Epic Games a penny of my money and until they decide to be competitive with Steam instead of just stealing the market from them, I will continue to boycott them.

I’m not alone in this mindset. Ubisoft was releasing games exclusively on Epic Games for a while and they’ve just decided that their newest Assassin’s Creed game will release on Steam, due to poor sales on Epic. Also, Alan Wake II had dismal sales because it’s locked behind Epic’s storefront. So a lot of other gamers aren’t willing to put up with Epic Games’ BS and their model is crumbling.

Epic is what happens when a corporation pops up expecting to make money off gamers. Steam is what happens when someone who is a gamer themselves and appreciates the gaming experience creates a store for gamers. I have given thousands of dollars to Steam over the years and have a massive library of their games. I only have a few free games on Epic and I won’t even install their launcher anymore. As a consumer, I vote with my wallet, and Epic needs to get with the program or go away.

I would highly recommend not starting with phone games. 90% of them are designed to be addicting, borderline gambling games, which you can collect or accomplish more things if you just pay them an easy $2 or more… which quickly turns into $20, which then becomes $50+. Before you know it, you’re throwing hundreds of dollars at what is essentially a repetitive unending game, just for the dopamine hit.

I know; my wife is addicted to these games and I see $20 charges to our bank account every few days. Nothing ever changes in her games. She never progresses anywhere and there’s no end to the game, but it gives her a boost on scores or collectibles or rare limited items, so she drops the money. It’s been especially hard to break her of the habit.

I got her to sign up for Steam on her desktop PC and I gifted her a few co-op games, and so we play games online together to give her something fun to do that doesn’t require spending money to progress. She used to be awful at FPS games, but playing with me gave her more confidence and practice, and now she’s pretty decent.

She really loves Deep Rock Galactic, because a lot of the game is just mining and resource-collecting, with only a little alien bug shooting. She plays as the engineer, so she can set up a turret and not have to worry too much about aiming herself. Plus, playing solo means she gets Bosco, the flying droid, to help her with combat and resource-collecting too. If I’m not around to play with her, she has all the assistance she needs to relax and enjoy the game. It was a very good intro to video games for her.

Lemmy is my main social media account. I also switched from Reddit when Spez killed third party apps, and I won’t go back. I use Sync for Lemmy on my phone and tablet. I paid for the lifetime Ultra account, because that’s how much of a “fuck you” I wanted to give Spez. I’ll gladly pay the $100 for an alternative ad-free app than use Reddit’s free app.

I also use Imgur, although it’s been suffering from enshittification ever since Sarah and the team sold it. I can’t even save a post without getting a pop-up asking to subscribe to the user or follow similar content tags. Or downvote without being asked if I want to block the user or related tags. Just let me do the thing and move on! Stop trying to customize my experience! I’m still able to block their ads, thanks to my VPN service, but they built a dedicated ad space at the bottom of the app that I can’t make go away. So a section of the bottom of my Imgur screen is unusable black space. I miss being able to use my full screen to browse images.

I still have Facebook, but only because everyone I know from my childhood until now is there and it’s my main way of staying in touch with people. If I dump Facebook, I’ll have practically no one left in my life, except for my sister, wife, and maybe two friends. If I need social engagement concerning something going on in my life, I’ll post it there. But I don’t use it much.

I have LinkedIn and spent years keeping my profile up to date and super detailed, expecting to need some good references and a solid history of experience and accomplishments. But then I retired at 38 years old and found out I don’t need to work anymore, so it’s just been collecting dust for the last 2 years now. I still get the occasional request to connect from someone offering to help me find a job (I’m a veteran), but I don’t need their assistance. I’m quite happy being retired young.

I have a Discord server I built for my closest friends to stay in touch, but only 2 people regularly interact on it. I subscribed to maybe 30+ other random servers, but I mute pretty much all of them so I’m not inundated with Discord notifications all the time.

I have Twitch, but mostly used it to stream the games I’m playing when I’m bored. I’m happy if I get 1 or 2 views. I do it just for the fun of it, not to build a following or anything.

I have NextDoor, but there are thousands of people in my town who use it regularly, so it’s hard to stay in touch with my “neighbors.” I mostly ignore it unless I’m trying to find suggestions for something local.

I made a Bluesky account last year; got an invite from a friend before it opened up to everyone. But I hardly ever used Twitter in the past. I always felt like it was pointless unless you were a celebrity with tons of followers. So I’m having trouble thinking of ways to use Bluesky now.

I have Instagram, but only because Facebook merged my account with Instagram when they bought it. I’ve never used it, not even to browse others’ content there.

I made a Snapchat account in high school, but never used it. That was over 20 years ago. Back then, Snapchat was just used to share selfies, and I didn’t like taking selfies so I had no use for it. Is Snapchat still a thing?

I had a MySpace account when I was a teenager, but I guess the site got sold sometime in the past decade or two. I kinda forgot about it, and the last time I went to check it out, it was a totally different site and didn’t recognize my login anymore.

I made an account on Pixelfed last year to share pictures, but I don’t really have anything to share right now. I only remembered I had the account because I just now found their app in my phone.

I use Patreon, mostly just to follow a few people I know and support them.

I worked as an IT guy in the military, and we were explicitly banned from using TikTok when it became popular, because it was a Chinese spyware program and they didn’t want it stealing data on US military members. When you installed it, we found that it embedded itself in your phone in a way that was extremely difficult to fully remove, then granted itself full access to your phone and started trickling your data to Chinese servers. It was a massive security vulnerability, which is why President Biden pushed to block TikTok from the US. But the app was so popular, he got a lot of pushback and it never got blocked. It’s still wildly popular, but I’ll never touch that program.

I tried Warhammer 40K once, but I got the cold shoulder when I mentioned I didn’t have any minis to play with.

They also took 3 sessions to finish pursuing a suspicious character across an alley. I nope’d out of the group after that.

I enjoy the imagination and storytelling most of all. Coming up with an adventure for all of us to discuss and enjoy is fun!

But most of the groups I’ve played with take forever to do anything. We’ll spend like 4 sessions just trying to wrap up a scenario in a tavern and move on. I need to find a DM who can keep the action going and not just give people all the time they want to talk their way through a situation before acting. And I also need to find players who are more decisive.

I’ve played with five completely different groups in the past 20 years, and all of them were exactly like this.

I love the idea of DnD, but every group I’ve ever played with just made it such a drag. I’ve never had fun actually playing it. So now I follow the memes and that’s about it.

Oh, and the Mann Shorts videos about DnD. I would totally play with those guys.

Here you go, I added some pixels to your post:

Oh my god! I used to read Sam & Fuzzy about 2 decades ago when I was a teenager! I didn’t realize the strip was still running. It got weird for a while and the main characters disappeared for about a year of strips, so I kind of lost interest. I wonder what’s happened in the last 20 years. It looks like it was rebooted about 15 years ago, and I don’t recognize any characters in recent strips.

If I had to ask my boss for permission to use the restroom all the time, I’d probably respond the same way.

I never considered Dr Pepper as a person because they made a big deal about how it doesn’t have a period in the name, like an actual doctor title would. So it’s always just been a brand name to me.

But I’m a bit neurotic about nitpicky details like that.

That’s the route I took. I recently bought a 48" 4K monitor, hooked a mini PC up to it, and now I stream my movie and TV show collection through Plex. I still have Internet access on my “TV,” but I’m in control of what pops up (I block all ads on my home network). I just use a small wireless keyboard and mouse instead of a remote.

I haven’t actually owned a TV since about 2008. I have better media options through computers, and the technology just keeps getting better. Cable and public access television are a pain because you’re constantly bombarded with ads. With my own computer, I can circumvent ads and get a solid viewing experience.