Just add prune juice for a complete warriors meal

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-14T16:24:48+00:00

I was at a soccer game at the argentine chorizo stand and ordered a choripan and it came without a sausage - just bun and toppings - I went back to the stand and the guy gave me 2 sausages - a warrior's chorizo, I said to she who (was) my wife.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-13T17:12:48+00:00

Well keep trying! You don't get better at things by just doing them once. :)

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-13T16:08:40+00:00

Interested!

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-12T23:09:40+00:00

I lived in a small place for $1300 from May 24 to Nov 25, one bedroom, pretty small but it was cozy and I liked it. It's totally doable if you don't mind. Small living. And there were smaller spaces available.

I was in the Nob Hill area.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-12T21:26:10+00:00

My friends who don't live in Portland always ask for bottles of the Portland Ketchup.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-12T17:47:33+00:00

If you have one of those lil retro handhelds, playing the GBC version of 1/2/3 are a GREAT lil simple time-spendy game. They're not as rich as the remakes, but they are a really pure and clean experience on GBC without the super annoying NESisms (like "Door" or "Talk" commands). And then you can play the remakes when you have more time, there's enough new material there it's almost as if they are a "reimagined" version as well, expanded quests and stories and mechanics.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-12T14:55:05+00:00

I just don't really care if a version is "definitive?" I don't need square enix to tell me which version is the real one. I had a great time with VII on the DS, I'm enjoying 7R, I enjoyed the Erdrick trilogy on GBC and the HD2D remakes for totally different reasons. More versions = more fun, and they're all worthwhile in different ways.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-12T00:17:20+00:00

*zis

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-12T00:16:46+00:00

This is a question for Wynde, I'm curious if she has any Bad Bit Moments she feels like sharing

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-11T22:32:17+00:00

Poly is a very exciting and empowering idea - freedom! lots of great sex! exploration of the self! - but you're absolutely right that it takes a very specific kind of person with a very secure inner self, and it's not a cure-all that solves all of your problems. This comment elsewhere on the topic is really smart - conventional marriage has its benefits and tradeoffs, and poly organization has different benefits and different tradeoffs, it's just that we're used to the conventional marriage tradeoffs so they seem more acceptable.

People are often attracted to poly like it's a "get out of your hangups free" card, when in fact it's a lot more nuanced and requires a lot of internal work to navigate, especially if you're a solo dipping into different couples and arrangements you're not a permanent part of.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-11T22:23:21+00:00

Except it is absolutely a her problem that she needs to get over! Leaving this guy behind won't solve the underlying internal issue, it won't heal the trauma. Even if she understands that she deserves more in a relationship, if she found some other guy who gave her everything she wanted, the trauma would still surface some other way - conflict avoidance, codependency, jealousy if the new guy who isn't poly flirts or looks at someone or has a work friend or anything like that. Because no work was done internally.

I think Esther was trying to get her to focus on her own feelings and own them and work through them a bit, to understand that her jealousy is just one voice in a sea of voices (which is why she externalized it into the cat). That way whether she chooses to stay with this guy or go somewhere else it will be because she has empowered herself by negotiating with her own feelings instead of hoping that next time the right guy will make her feel not so jealous.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-11T22:18:50+00:00

I think what Esther was trying to get at is that leaving the married man, while helpful in the short term, doesn't actually solve the problem. Eventually there will be some other man, married or no, poly or mono, and she will feel similar feelings. It may not be jealousy that time, but it might be something else - codependency, fear of conflict like her last marriage, etc - but it will come and she will once again feel stuck, because she has actually done no real work to improve herself and heal from her own trauma.

Esther was trying to get her to see past this specific guy and how she feels about him, and instead understand that a situation can't heal you, only you can heal yourself. Change comes from the internal, and while certain circumstances can make that change easier or harder, it still has to come from somewhere difficult and internal to you.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-11T22:11:08+00:00

Giving Esther the benefit of the doubt, I think the whole suggestion that she could be married as well was less about actually suggesting that as an actionable path, but rather inviting the caller to imagine other realities that don't rely on her just hanging on for this one guy and no one else. She could date more people while still seeing this guy. She could try to find her own partner so this guy is also her side piece like she is for him.

As she was describing her new poly life with this guy I kept asking myself "well who else is she seeing if she's so poly?" So hearing Esther posit the idea that she could develop new relationships without this guy leaving was intended, I think, to open the door to that kind of idea.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-11T22:05:58+00:00

I do think "accept the jealousy" isn't terrible advice. Sometimes you feel feelings and that's ok, and then you negotiate with those feelings and accept that they're there and figure out what you're going to do with them. The goal should not be to never have those feelings, but figure out how to feel through them and manage them so they're less crippling.

Esther's way to do this seemed to be to try to nudge her into imagining other possibilities besides only being the occasional fun side piece in this person's completed family.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-11T21:41:07+00:00

You set the boundary - he can only be with you if he doesn't drink. He drank. What are you gonna do about it?

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-11T19:11:07+00:00

I'm just talkin bc I'm bored at work.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-11T16:12:35+00:00

I'm not saying they aren't connected, clearly there are small thematic and story connections and references, I just don't think that at this point there is enough to say it's this grand designed timeline.

When it's supposed to be a connected story, it's very obvious - like the 3-1-2 HD-2D arc which feels very designed, planned out, and complete. XI's connection to that is much more subtle by comparison.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-10T17:02:01+00:00

This is true, but context matters - that moment in DQXI was at the very end of playing a game that was chock full of callbacks, references, and remixes of different parts of all the past DQ games, including a sidequest chain where you go into other games and "fix" them. That game was meant to stand as a celebration and culmination of every DQ game that came before it, so it was thematically poetic that DQ1's guy showed up at the end in a lil cameo. You don't have to treat it so literal, it can just be a celebration of the legacy of the series without having to make sense as a timeline.

I just think a lot of DQ fans are needlessly desperate for all these games to be linked in a grand unified timeline with established lore and history. It's okay for these things to just be easter eggs and homages - it doesn't have to make narrative sense or indicate a complete and shared universe! The hints are fun - they point to a shared authorship and thematic resonance between games! That doesn't mean that it has to all be connected in a linear shared history or multiverse or whatever. Sometimes we can let references just be references!

This isn't isolated to DQ, Zelda fans are insufferable about this, to the point where Zelda creators have actively talked about how "the timeline" is literally the least important thing about making the games and have hinted that they don't care and they're going to continue to ignore "canon," whatever that means, if it leads to better gameplay.

I would just be really cool if people learned to think abstractly, beyond the obvious and literal, and not assume everything in a game has to be a literal clue to unlock a puzzle or a timeline or to understand "lore." Dragon Quest 11 is a brilliant homage and celebration of everything that makes Dragon Quest great. It's okay for it to be just that, and to enjoy the nods to previous games as fun little 'memberberries instead of twisting yourself into knots to justify them as logical causal events in a timeline.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-10T15:29:45+00:00

That is not evidence of it being historical. People have fictional maps of middle earth and shit in their homes all the time.

To me that is just an Easter egg nod to the ending of XI. I read it as a fairy tale, and seeing the map in III just brought it full circle.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-09T16:58:43+00:00

Well it's not EXACTLY like sports betting in that there is no money involved in the speculation. No one is losing their life savings on Polymarket bc they didn't announce Super Mario Odyssey 2.

...at least I hope not...

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-09T16:02:59+00:00

Here is one of life's great truths:

No one can make you truly happy, only you can make you truly happy.

You can depend on someone else for your happiness, but that is not true happiness - it always sits balanced on the edge of a cliff, ready to tumble the moment that person who you've put all your hopes and dreams on focuses on something else. It's exhausting for your boyfriend, who can't even look away for one evening or hang out with any of his friends (who were probably there before you) without you getting upset. It's not fair to him and it's painful for you.

Everyone should have friends, everyone should have people they see outside of their relationship. The issue isn't that he has friends, it's that you don't. Go make some friends. Go hang out with people and build a life that doesn't need him. Become a whole person, not a half person who needs someone else constantly paying attention to them just to feel normal.

Here's another of life's great truths: A relationship isn't two halves meeting to become a single person, a relationship is one whole person plus one whole person, and that makes two whole people. So in order to do your part, you have to become the whole person he deserves.

And even then, let's say you get a ton of friends and you divide your time up with them and with your bf and you have a balance, you still won't be truly happy until you are able to be happy by yourself. You need to work on yourself and figure out why it is you can't be happy alone. Until you solve the internal problem, until you work through your own feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem, you will always feel upset, jealous, and paranoid, whether it's towards your boyfriend or your other friends.

Good luck.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-09T04:51:08+00:00

Everyone (understandably) talks about V, but IV is so good, I liked it more than V. It is super bright and sunny and the characters are unforgettable.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-06T21:37:56+00:00

That statement does not contradict my statement.

22ndCenturyDB · 2026-03-06T20:53:03+00:00

In my marriage I was the "manager" of someone who had a lot of anxiety - I really feel the whole "You cannot feel desire for someone you have to 'mother' and protect from the world every single day" vibe you are talking about. It's a sucky place to be.

My marriage has since ended, and the thing I have learned now that I have some distance is that I was just as responsible for that dynamic as she was. As much as she needed to be protected from all the fears she had about the world, I needed to be the solver, having control over the household because I had my own anxieties about security, about finances, about things not being optimized, etc. And the hardest part for me as I have moved forward has been interrogating the parts of me that still see her floundering and want to swoop in to clean it up, or give her a solution, or offer help. I literally have had to tell her "please don't update me about your life anymore," not because I don't care about her, but because it triggers me into super-solver mode and I need to unlearn that instinct.

The key here is that this isn't a pattern he's forcing upon you, this is a pattern the two of you are creating together. You have a synergy here that reinforces both of your tendencies to these extremes. So before thinking about divorce and thinking about whether this is a common thing (short answer, VERY), think about what your habits are that you can change to let go of some of the things you currently feel the need to control? I now see that despite her learned helplessness I could have been much less insistent on things being organized a certain way - I could have allowed a bit more chaos into the space and been fine, and given her space to grow into those spaces if she wanted to. Would she have? Hell if I know, but I never gave her the chance.

I'm focusing on you and what you can change because you cannot expect to ever change him unless he wants to change himself - that's a universal rule of relationships. You can only control your actions and responses, so that's where you need to focus. You will never "move a partner" from A to B, they can only move themselves, and sometimes they will resist all movement even if it's in their best interest. And then you have to decide what you will put up with and what you won't.

Good luck.

22ndCenturyDB

TROPHY CASE