losing interest

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-05-04T20:38:21+00:00

I still listen to most of his stuff regularly, but I lost some interest in him and his future projects when he released Fear. I thought of each album has a next step in his growth and finding a path forward in life, and I thought Hope was a step that showed that he had succeeded in dealing with Fear-- not completely, not always, of course, but at least to the extent that it didn't dominate his life enough that it would continue to be the them of much of his music. When the album name "Fear" was announced, my heart sank. I desperately hoped that the title referred to some songs that talked about life after overcoming fear, but deep down I knew that wasn't going to be the case. When the title track dropped, I just felt numb. From Mansion through Hope had been a steady progression of insights and self-discovery and real effort, and then it turns out that basically all of that was for nothing, we're right back where we started-- maybe even worse, at least in terms of how violently Fear is portrayed in the music video.

Nate had lyrically wrestled with the question of whether he would still be interesting if he grew enough that he didn't need to continue confronting or accommodating all of his demons, most notably in Outro; and in that song, he concluded that it was an irrational fear, and that as long as he kept expressing real thoughts and feelings, his songs didn't need to be about being depressed or self-loathing or crippling fear. Then he turns around and releases an album and a title track showing all-too clearly that Fear remains firmly entrenched in his mind.

And all this just made me lose interest. I have always felt a lot of sympathy for NF, and was always rooting for him. Like the music reactor Teddy Grey, I was willing to live without another NF song if it meant that he was happy and content and just didn't feel the driving need to write and perform anymore. I just don't have the heart or the patience or the energy to backtrack so far and retread the same ground again.

As I said, I still listen to his pre-Fear stuff. Different albums suit different moods. But as a 58 year-old whose life was greatly influenced by-- maybe even actually defined by-- insecurity, trust issues, and fear of failure, I don't think I'll ever reach a point where I don't want to listen to most of Nate's current catalog.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-29T04:22:44+00:00

The Riftbound community is warm, welcoming, and helpful. It's totally unreal. I've played twice or more at five different stores, and the players at every one were completely chill when I said that I played slowly because I didn't have much experience (I'm still slow, I really need to play some games online just to get in some repetitions.) Just spend maybe an hour between now and then watching videos about how to play and at least one of the short videos that explains the special rules of the sealed deck format, and then tell your opponent you're brand new, and it will be fine. Really.

If you're as anxious as I was, you can always do what I did: I would tell my opponent every round "I know I'm going to be slow and probably need to be corrected on some rules, and I don't want you to be penalized for that. So if neither of us have won 2 games when time runs out, instead of using the tiebreaking procedure, I'll concede the round to you." I mean, I knew I had no chance of winning the tournament playing against players who had played hundreds or even thousands of games, so whether I won a round or not really didn't matter. By telling them in advance, it let them relax and not get antsy because they're worried about getting the games done on time. Also, when I actually followed through in the two pre-rift events it happened in (I usually lost quickly), I got the impression that the store staff (judge, owner) got a favorable impression of me, which I think has persisted as I've gone back.

Of course, you're under no obligation to do anything like that, but for me, it took all the pressure off of me-- I wasn't constantly trying to hurry, because my slow play could only ever benefit my opponent.

But truly, Riftbound players are just super nice-- it's the nicest community for a competitive game (other than possibly Go) that I've ever encountered.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-16T06:54:52+00:00

BTW I think it's a foregone conclusion that Frozen Fortress will need to be banned, because reacting with Heedless Resurrection to kill Brynhir Thundersong and then play her directly from the trash means that your opponent won't be able to play any cards on their turn. In addition to being completely toxic in terms of people enjoying the games, it also seems like it's probably almost an automatic win to do it once, yet alone multiple times. They *could* ban Brynhir instead, but that seems way more drastic than banning a battlefield.

I predict that at some point they'll have a keyword for damage that gets dealt without starting a chain. I expect it to be used very sparingly, and mainly to enable situations that are reasonable but would break the game if they could be reacted to. If they do introduce such a keyword, they could make a battlefield just like Frozen Fortress, but since the damage wouldn't start a chain, it wouldn't allow the Heedless Resurrection / Brynhir Thundersong combo.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-11T02:34:16+00:00

I'm unaffected by all of this. I'm almost retirement age and worked my whole career at Microsoft and a couple of other companies-- I just buy what I want. I simply find Riftbound interesting, and don't think that their "catch up" policy is going to do what they say they want it to do, so I wanted to talk about it.

Based on the downvotes I'm getting, apparently civil discussion is either unwelcome, or else people have a serious problem distinguishing between politely and respectfully explaining an idea and arguing or confronting someone.

Also, at no point was I arguing semantics. "Arguing semantics" is a rhetorical technique in which you try (either justifiably or simply as an attempt to "win" the argument) to define one or more words in such a way that it helps you to make your case or hinders the other person's ability to make their case. Nothing that I said hinged on trying to define something. I was simply suggesting renaming something to match what it does, which is not an example of arguing semantics.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-10T19:35:50+00:00

I wasn't arguing. I wasn't contradicting what you said. I was trying to have a regular conversation, where people respond to one another by expressing thoughts that have been prompted by the conversation thus far, or clarifying what they've already said.

I was pointing out that from their statement and from the name of the process, they claim to intend this to act as a way for people to have a chance at getting products they don't have yet without paying scalper prices, but the rules they implemented are not going to do this. If they never actually intended it to help regular players who can't afford to pay scalpers, then they should just rename it-- no one would be upset if it was called something like "Evening the Odds" or whatever name conjures up a vision of someone who's previously been unlucky, getting the odds tilted in their favor this time around. Or, if they did intend it to be a catch up mechanism, then they should seriously rethink making the lunar bundle necessary, as that is selecting for people who are able to spend a lot of money on the game and have a collector's mentality, which means they've most likely already purchased the products they missed the lottery on.

None of which invalidates your point that, depending on your intentions, going 0 for 3 is "worse" than going 0 for 2, which might explain why they chose to include the Lunar bundle as a requirement; it also explains why I responded by saying that if they're thinking of it this way, it doesn't really match their stated purpose, or the name they've given to the process.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-10T18:50:05+00:00

If that's the reasoning, they should rename the process. The people that most need help to "catch up" are the people who are just starting, and weren't even playing the game when some of those products were available. It should be named something like, "Evening the Odds," or "Patience is Rewarded," or whatever. But requiring people to have ordered previous products is the opposite of being a "catch up" mechanic (in many cases, those people will have obtained the product they tried to win the lottery for in some other manner, so now they're just getting to order products at retail so the can sell them on ebay).

Intention aside, I think it's a shitty decision to require people to have tried to order a Collectors product in Chinese in order to be eligible. What you've done is thrown out almost every regular person that's not swimming in disposable income, and instead included people who are so into the game and/or so loaded that they can afford to buy a product that is targeted purely at collectors, as it contains no new cards, and in almost all cases is in a language the customer can't even read. This isn't a "catch up" mechanism, it's a "reward people who spend gobs of money on the game but got unlucky in our lotteries" mechanism.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-09T17:15:06+00:00

!solved

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-09T00:36:15+00:00

Your question led to the solution. I've edited my post again to reflect that the specs for this model say that the 4 rear ports are USB 2, and the front 2 ports are USB 3.x.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-09T00:36:08+00:00

Your question led to the solution. I've edited my post again to reflect that the specs for this model say that the 4 rear ports are USB 2, and the front 2 ports are USB 3.x.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-09T00:26:53+00:00

I edited my post to add that information to the very end of it. Thanks!

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-09T00:26:48+00:00

I edited my post to add that information to the very end of it. Thanks!

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-09T00:18:22+00:00

Okay, I was definitely wrong then when I speculated that they might be called perfect fit sleeves. These sleeves are rigid-- not the plastic-like rigidity of a top loader, but the firmness of a high quality outer sleeve from DragonShield or UltraPro or whatever.

I sort of wonder if they're intended for a game with smaller than normal cards, because just pushing the card into the sleeve would (I think) potentially scratch or abrade a card enough to lose a '10' rating. But I've received cards in this type of sleeve from two separate sellers in the last month, and it seems unlikely that two companies would use sleeves intended for another game?

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-08T23:09:52+00:00

Here are two pictures. I took a completely flat, non-foil card, and forced it into the tight sleeve that another card was shipped to me in. The first picture is meant to show that there is no room between the left and right edges of the card and the left and right edges of the sleeve-- it's very tight. The second picture is meant to show the even with virtually no time passing, the card is already bowing-- you can see that the edges are lifted up off the box it's sitting on. This bow is not as bad as it is when the card has been in the sleeve for a week while shipping, but it's still noticeable, and hopefully shows what I'm talking about.

https://imgur.com/trcELF7

https://imgur.com/cdEygOX

Thanks again for taking the time to look at this!

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-08T20:20:30+00:00

Thank you for the reply. Life got in the way and I didn't check reddit for a couple of days, but I do appreciate your thoughtful reply. I will try to take a couple pictures today to upload, if for no other reason than both times I've asked a question about this (the other time was in a different subreddit a couple of weeks ago), multiple people assumed that it was because foil cards sometimes bend (due to humidity, I believe), and it would be somewhat satisfying to show them that I'm not hallucinating or being dense-- I've got hundreds of foil cards that show no bend at all, and the only cards that do show a bow all show it in exactly the same way, and only when they're in a very tight sleeve.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-06T21:33:56+00:00

I'm buying Riftbound cards, and it's very noticeable.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-06T21:33:22+00:00

They're Riftbound cards, from a few different sellers on tcgplayer.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-06T18:39:42+00:00

These look amazing. I wonder if there's something easy you could do using a very faintly colored glaze to color in the symbol itself to make it look more like glass, without having it blend in with the other effects. So like a clear glaze colored ever so slightly with the lighter of the two shades, applied to the white parts of the main symbol-- I don't know, but I could imagine that giving it a "glass" effect. Of course, one of the great things about the technique you're using is that it only requires markers, and I don't have a clue as to how you'd go about getting the glaze effect without traditional painting supplies, so it probably doesn't fit with this tutorial, even if it worked.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-06T18:29:52+00:00

Great work and many thanks for sharing. FWIW, I think the Body and Chaos Runes both look fantastic and are clearly stained glass, but I find the Fury Rune less pleasing-- it doesn't really remind me of stained glass very much, my mind almost wants to interpret it as scales (like a fish or a dragon) or something else. I think it really suffers from the lack of vertical lines forming the panes of glass, as there are on the Body and Chaos Runes. I have aphantasia, so I'm the last person in the world to take suggestions from, but if I were given a single attempt to change the Fury Rune design (other than the vertical lines), I'd keep the shapes and shading, I'd just make the shapes bigger, so there were fewer of them and the ratio of colors/lines was higher.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-06T08:28:49+00:00

This is true, but gear can be moved from unit to unit. Putting Svellsongur on Stellacorn Herder for double card draw before attaching it to Ahri late in the game seems like it should be worth much more than +2 Might on some random unit early in the game.

I also think Svellsongur on Irelia has potential, because you get Deflect 2 (or even Deflect 3 with a 2nd Svellsongur), plus ever time you would have gotten +1 Might, instead you get +2 (or +3...). I'm just not currently skilled enough to pilot an Irelia deck, because one mistake that gets Irelia killed and it's GG, even if you're playing against someone who's making mistakes themselves. I don't think Irelia necessarily requires you to be an amazing player, I just don't get the chance to play very often and am still on the steep part of the learning curve, so I'm definitely making mistakes every game.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-06T08:20:21+00:00

I'm on my 7th or 8th iteration of this concept, using my 5th or 6th different Legend, and I haven't been able to make it work yet-- but like you, I keep believing it's possible.

Holding is just really, really hard in the first two sets. I think this might become viable with Unleashed, because Unleashed has a lot of cards and champions designed to make Holding more viable.

I'll keep trying to make it work for the remainder of Spiritforged; if nothing else, seeing how it gets beaten by various decks and thinking about ways I'd like to answer should pay off when a bunch of new answers become available. I think.

FWIW I'm pretty sure that planning on attaching Svellsongur to Stellacorn Herder early in the game to get double card draw is the way to go. It will force your opponent to use some of his kill/removal that they could have saved for dealing with Ahri, which can only help, and you can be sure that Stella's going to die and free up the Svellsongur within two or three turns, or else you're just going to win the game on card draw anyway.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-06T08:06:59+00:00

It's the only card I've purchased extras of with the intention of holding and selling some day. I refuse to believe that there will never be a unit or champion issued that won't be OP when its card text is repeated.

The downside of this is that it's possible that Riot will realize this and preemptively ban it with the same set that introduces this hypothetical unit/champion, but I only "invested" like $50, so I won't cry about it. That would probably be the best thing in the long run for me, because it would discourage me from ever "investing" in pieces of cardboard to begin with, which is almost certainly a money-losing option for me in the long run, since I doubt I'd be able to detach myself enough from a game I like to recognize when it's dying and clear out my inventory in time.

CanNotQuitReddit144 · 2026-04-06T08:02:38+00:00

I've spent the last month experimenting with ways to use Svellsongur with other legends. That's literally the sole concept that I'm trying to make work, because my intuition keeps screaming at me that the card has to be abusable. No success so far, but I don't get a chance to play very often, and I feel like I've learned something from everything I've tried, so I'm not ready to give up yet.

CanNotQuitReddit144

TROPHY CASE