Chocolate, alcohol, video games, and expounding too much about my interests to anyone standing in front of me.

Also, explaining things on the internet…

Just ignore us. Consistent eye contact, staring, or obviously paying a lot of unwarranted attention to us is way more threatening than just being big or burly.

Guild Wars 2, it can be extremely cozy in places. Beautiful environments, it lets you run around and just stumble across something to do, and you can get in a groove doing a map meta with a series of events leading to a big boss fight with 50+ people all participating and then you can just run off later harvesting leeks or whatever. I can just zone out watching a show on my other monitor while working on a collection or an achievement or getting flax or something.

Banished, you can’t get more Indie than just one guy’s passion project.

I don’t know what it is about that game but it really struck a chord with me and I’ve come back to it over and over. It’s my favorite game to play when I’m sick and can’t do anything. It’s relaxing and peaceful and cozy while also being complex and ruthlessly challenging at the same time, so it’s like spinning plates. Seems easy when you get the hang of it but it can all come crashing down if you make a bad enough mistake. It’s spawned some copy cats, and I’ve tried them, but the original just gets me somehow.

Sure they do, all the time, as long as it’s an interesting story.

More than half of the books on this list are by “random” ie, non famous people.

This exactly. It’s an easily recognizable legal shortcut to a bunch of systems, rules and privileges that apply to the situation of two people wanting to live their lives together. Doesn’t have to cost much, if anything, and doesn’t have to have anything at all to do with religion or rituals. Can be just two people showing up at the town hall if you want it to be.

Love ballroom dancing, and especially east coast swing is my jam. Unfortunately no regular social dances in my area but I go when there’s one available. It’s really fun and playful, great way to meet new people and good exercise. Equipment cost is basically a pair of shoes. I joke about dressing up in a dress and heels for my workouts.

It’s definitely not Guild Wars 1, but it does still have a “low level cap” in the way that it’s extremely easy to get to max level doing a variety of content, then the vast majority of content is done at that level. You probably reach level 80 within completing not even 5%-10% of the total available content, so it’s just a number. The way you “advance” your character is through gear and cosmetics, and there’s an account leveling system called masteries you unlock at 80.

As a long time fan and proud GWAMM, honestly it doesn’t need the “classic” treatment. It’s still online, and the last major content patches didn’t change anything significant enough to alter the gameplay in a way that would make people “miss the old days”. They added some end game content and some quality of life improvements and some tools that allowed players to more easily solo content, then left well enough alone. It still has a small core of regular players, and has the event schedule going on auto. I suppose they could do some graphical improvements but it’s still a very good game as it is

Considering how famously hard to kill werewolves are, it would probably have to be a chocolate wrapped in silver and then eaten with the foil on to do any real harm.

Posted most of this in another thread but I’m glad to help share my tricks. I have managed to nearly eliminate Amazon entirely from our lives for the past two years. I usually find things by searching what I want to buy on DuckDuckGo and then adding “-amazon”, “-etsy”, “-walmart”, “-temu” and “-pinterest” as search modifiers.

A lot of little shops are perfectly legit, but watch out for:

Things being ridiculous bargains. Small shops will almost always be more expensive due to higher overheads and less bulk

Too much variety in product (unless they’re a marketplace with 3rd party vendors). A legit shop will have inventory that makes sense together in its theme. If they sell everything from bubblebath to uranium they’re either probably not actually selling it or drop shipping it.

Pictures that look like they come from lots of different sources, or no consistency in images. If they don’t have their own pictures of products or standards of presentation that’s suspicious

Some general recs:

For anything electronic or computer related: B&H Photo or Microcenter

For music stuff: Sweetwater, but there’s a lot of great small music stores, or you can use a marketplace like Reverb

For clothes: if you have any clothes you already enjoy, go directly to their brand website. If you don’t, go to local secondhand shops and touch, handle and try on some clothes to see them in person. I’ve discovered some brands I like by finding something in a thrift store that was well made but not my size or preferred color.

For house repair and DIY stuff: we order from a local building supply store, but there’s also hardwareandtools.com, 1stoplighting, Waysource, Lightbulbs.com, Timothy’s Toolbox etc.

For food items, local grocery stores often offer online shopping and delivery. If it’s a specialty item or imported the import companies sometimes have their own websites. There’s also Hive or GroveCo for some granola type B Corp goodness

For tea, coffee and spices, Adagio and its sister websites

For super fast, need it now shipping, Target has a lot of the same things Amazon does and even does same day delivery for an extra fee for certain items.

For something hard to find you can’t find another site for, try Ebay.

I do business with all sorts of independent retailers and have only had good experiences with them. These are sites that I’ve personally bought from but there are a lot of smaller sites just trying to make a place for themselves on the internet

I have never been, nor seem to be able to get motion sickness. No seasickness either. I can read books on all sorts of moving vehicles, and I love roller coasters. Whip me around upside down in pitch dark at 60mph and I’ll just call it a good time. My husband says I am squandering my powers because I can play as much of whatever motion intense VR game as I want, but I just end up playing Beat Saber most of the time.

For a while, I played the MMO Guild Wars 2 as a music simulator. It has playable in game musical instruments that you can equip, and play with the number keys. A-G are represented with the numbers 1-8 with 9 and 0 swapping an octave lower or higher. Killing monsters? Doing dungeons? Raids and world bosses? Nah I’m just chilling on a beautiful forested cliffside near a waterfall figuring out an arrangement for the Lord of the Rings theme.

Cute idea, but disappointed that it’s just a reskinned car racing game. I read the title and I imagine a “cat scale” racer, running around indoors having to jump sofa arms and climb cat towers or doing an obstacle course in someone’s yard, going under bushes and through kids forts etc. Just realizing now a cat parkour game in the style of Mirror’s Edge would be good silly fun.

Well, the nice thing is GW1 is still there. They decided to keep it going because the cost was minimal enough that it was worth it to them, so all of that content is still perfectly playable and there are still people running ATFH and Droks etc. It has a small dedicated following and is still a fun game in its own right. They’re different games but I enjoy both.

I always enjoy the April Fools efforts from Guild Wars. They’ve done all sorts of things from making all players tiny, giving them bobbleheads, making them go into “airplane mode” (a reference to a t-pose animation glitch but with added “homemade” sound effects) to entire quest lines and even an entirely new game mode inspired by 8 bit platformers that spawned its own festival because it was awesome. This year you can relive some highlights from recent years, but the new addition is being able to open your own Cat Cafe in your homestead.

I find this funny because while reading this post I thought to myself “I don’t see why I wouldn’t date someone like that?” and I identify as demisexual. I’m already taken, unfortunately for OP, but I’m sure if he were to mention wanting someone to cuddle or being lonely to those friends who called him “cute” and “adorable” someone may step up and either find him a match or admit interest.

I really love tilapia in butter with a bit of lemon, salt and pepper. It’s a mild and subtle tasting fish, and it’s hard to mess it up when cooking. You can get frozen loins for cheap because they’re plant fed and easily farmed. Cook until flakey, don’t burn it, serve with some pan fried or roasted veggies and rice or quinoa. I’ve only ever had it take on that “fishy” smell when I left it to thaw in the fridge too long.

There’s a site called “goods unite us” that I’ll check before making a big purchase or deciding to make a store a regular stop. It has the average donation history of the company and who they donated to. It sucks that we have a Home Depot in a really convenient location but they’re especially egregious donators.

Organizing, teaching and leading raids absolutely helped with my leadership skills and IRL confidence!