❌ moved to wandering.shop @listelian@witches.town

@DialMforMara Yeah, like... this can happen anywhere, it's true, but I feel like most other places (even if they have other problems, some of which can be worse for you depending on who you are) have this critical mass of socially comfortable people who can facilitate new arrivals / anxious people getting friends.

Whereas in the Pacific Northwest it seems like, if you didn't grow up or at least go to school here, you'd best have existing friends from elsewhere move to the area, because finding Your People is going to take a Very Long Time.

@DialMforMara I honestly think the Seattle Freeze is a symptom of bigger problems, likely caused by this town just being a magnet for people with severe anxiety and not really having the kind of local culture that can ameliorate that.

Getting perspective on it such that you don't take it personally is definitely the first step towards adapting, though! I'm... not quite sure what the other steps are.

(The biggest danger, in my experience, is desperation-induced glomming onto anyone who doesn't ghost without actually evaluating whether they're a good idea. So, um, try not to do that thing and watch out for people who are doing it.)

@kara_dreamer I've been changing mine very slowly and gradually, but it helps that I kept my initials, last name, and many of the letters in my first name.

@kara_dreamer Yeah, Chrono Cross is interesting but I don't know if I'd exactly recommend it, especially to someone for whom JRPGs are a serious time commitment. Whereas Chrono Trigger is _super_ polished and well done (even if the 65 million BC timeline is a little... Flintstones-y).

@kara_dreamer Oh, and it's specifically the music for what in Chrono Cross is the version of your main character's hometown that _isn't_ in your main character's home timeline. So, home-but-not-home. Nice.

@kara_dreamer I don't know the particulars, but I suspect there's a focus on Flowey.

@kara_dreamer Yeah, I had an embarrassing moment at church with my family a few years back when I realized how much more the (in some ways quite similar) events of N. K. Jemisin's _Kingdom of the Gods_ moved me than the central story of the worship service I was attending. Because Jemisin knows how to write compelling epic fiction, unlike the authors of the Bible.

@kara_dreamer I do know someone else who's at least as attached to Undertale as you and has a custom, serious, magic-involving spiritual practice that incorporates modern media characters and I'm sure involves Undertale. I don't think the specifics of her attachments have much in common with yours, but.

@ikea_femme Oh no, do I have to add him to my list of famous old dead eggs now? (Already on said list: T. H. White, Hans Christian Andersen.)

@kara_dreamer I don't know if TOS can really be blamed for everything it inspired. Like, a lot of those ideas are simple enough that they would've entered the popular culture some other way.

Though maybe in this case with some signifier of mirror evil other than the goatee.

@Noelle808 Though, oddly, both of them collect swords.

Fighting with spears while collecting swords: a more nuanced picture of the lesbian lifestyle (and a great paper title, if anyone ever wants to use it)?

@kara_dreamer Oh, then at least you won't miss the EarthBound references that become increasingly more frequent as Mother 3 progresses!

@kara_dreamer Even aside from the rhythm, I'll bet there's a lot going on that assumes you've played EarthBound or other JRPGs in terms of combat mechanics. And from what I've seen of my roommate playing games similarly "out of sequence", that stuff can count for a lot and still be totally invisible to me.

Also, like, even if Toby wasn't explicitly trying for this (which I'll bet he was), a lot that makes pacifist runs possible in Undertake also necessarily makes the game more newbie-friendly.

@kara_dreamer Possibly what this is showing is that, in ways that were mostly invisible to me (aside from the obvious shortness), Undertale is friendly to people who aren't used to JRPGs in ways that The Classics really, really aren't.

@kara_dreamer A lot of Mother 3's feels for me is the slow burn of watching your home town and the people in it get worse due to cops/capitalists moving in, which may not work for everyone. But there is of course still plenty more to come...

@ikea_femme I think people can feel fake at any pace. Like, I didn't know since I was little and also have been taking my time like whoa, and, surprise, I feel fake for this sometimes.

(Not as often as I used to, though, because I know enough other trans people to know that this is a universal experience and also completely wrong, and more often than not at this point that knowing actually sticks.)

@ikea_femme *hug* That sounds awful and I'm sorry you're stuck putting up with it.

@kara_dreamer It's a good chapter.