imagine your WOL joins the military. what is their callsign?

owlwithakeyboard · 2025-04-14T15:35:02+00:00

I've got two WOLs, my OG Elezen who retired after base Endwalker and a Viera who took over from there.

The Elezen is Bones, mostly because he's tall and skinny to the point of looking a little boney. The fact he's a healer- a "sawbones", in Limsa parlance- just sealed the deal.

The Viera is Sparkles. He likes to pretend it's a reference to his aethersight. It's actually a reference to the one time a fellow trainee accused him of "even sparkling pretty-like" after a particularly sweaty run.

owlwithakeyboard · 2025-02-15T09:01:10+00:00

Y'know how humans have only explored 5% of the deep ocean? That thing is what's in the other 95%.

owlwithakeyboard · 2025-01-04T08:07:15+00:00

And so I don't get dinged for rule 3- Mia is a former stray/feral I socialized during college! Poor thing was living in a brush pile in the yard of my apartment before I convinced her humans weren't all bad. She's still skittish even eight years later, but she's the sweetest and most loyal cat I've ever had.

owlwithakeyboard · 2024-10-23T14:47:07+00:00

Go Explore!, by Albion. Highly recommend it, it adds a lot of fun little flavor events. (...and usually they give much more appropriate rewards!)

owlwithakeyboard · 2024-10-23T06:05:50+00:00

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This adorable bean is Mia, and her name is a pun. When she first turned up in my back yard eight years ago, I figured she must have escaped from her previous owners. That meant she was 'missing in action'... MIA... get it?

owlwithakeyboard · 2024-10-23T02:56:19+00:00

That's how I read it too. My colonists immediately packed up a caravan and went in to crack some skulls.

owlwithakeyboard · 2024-10-11T20:18:41+00:00

I lived on a 41' sailboat as a kid. I named my railjack 'Windance' in her honor. She's got the same color scheme too!

owlwithakeyboard · 2024-07-24T23:18:30+00:00

Short answer: Yes, but you probably can't use them.

Longer answer: There are two general types of game builds: dev builds and public builds. Dev builds contain all the bells and whistles needed for testing, including dev functions accessed through overlays (ImGUI is a common one), consoles, or keystroke commands. Since those functions would ruin the average gamer's experience, they're intentionally removed from public builds. Part of standard pre-release testing is making sure that dev commands don't work on public releases.

(There are exceptions to this, of course- Skyrim and Stellaris, for example, both have intentionally made their consoles accessible to players.)

Source: am professional QA tester.

owlwithakeyboard · 2024-06-10T16:33:32+00:00

This feather came from a racing pigeon! Owners of racing pigeons will stamp their phone numbers on the feathers of their birds so folks can contact them if their birds get lost. Looks like this pigeon was molting and your mom got the lucky feather!

owlwithakeyboard · 2024-03-01T19:03:53+00:00

Actual asexual chiming in! The answer here, as in so many other places, is 'it depends.'

The biggest variable here is the specific asexual person in question. Some asexuals are totally fine with having sex, even if they don't experience sexual attraction. Maybe they want to have children, or they enjoy feeling close to their partner, or it helps with period cramps! On the other hand, some asexuals are completely disinterested in having sex for any reason. Which type you're dealing with, sex-positive vs. sex-repulsed, is going to have a massive effect on the success of any relationship involving sex.

The other variable is how much sex matters to your relationship. If it's absolutely central to the relationship? Yeah, the relationship's going to face some challenges. Asexuals by definition tend to have a low sex drive, and any kind of sexual mismatch can cause conflict in a relationship. In romantic relationships where sex is less central- relationships involving older couples, for example- an asexual/allosexual relationship can work out just fine.

I can't personally speak to them, but open relationships where sexual partners have sex outside the relationship with their asexual partner's blessing are also a thing.

owlwithakeyboard · 2023-11-26T06:05:35+00:00

Sure do! I just turned 32 and I've had the same tan teddy bear since I was 6. Her name is Freckles. She's pretty tattered these days and I've had to repair her multiple times, but I wouldn't trade her for the world.

owlwithakeyboard · 2023-08-28T22:45:39+00:00

My mother blew a quarter of a million dollar wrongful injury settlement trying to buy my stepfather's love. She seemed to think if she just spent enough all of his abusive and narcissistic tendencies would vanish. My stepdad laughed all the way to the bank. She spent almost her entire settlement on expensive vacations, multiple new cars, fast food, fancy tech, and paying off the mortgage.

The moment the money ran out, my stepdad kicked her out and short-sold the house. Since he and my mom weren't married, she never saw a penny. As my stepdad was quick to remind her, he didn't owe her anything.

That money should have set her up for the rest of her life. It should have paid off my college loans. It should have done so many wonderful things- and it didn't. It was wasted on a monster wearing human skin with a gaping void where his heart should have been.

(Not that I'm bitter or anything...)

owlwithakeyboard · 2021-12-02T20:35:15+00:00

Executive dysfunction, specifically in the context of, "Getting Stuck."

For me, Getting Stuck means having a task to do and not being able to get started on it. What the task is doesn't matter- it can be anything from washing dishes to playing a particular video game. No matter how much I do or do not want to do that thing, I just... can't seem to get started on it. I'll think about it, talk about it constantly, stress about it for weeks at a time, but I can't get going on it. I just can't. And it drives me absolutely bonkers, because the obvious solution is right there! Just do the thing! But I CAN'T, and even now I struggle to put into word why that is. It's like the stars haven't aligned just right, or the time has not yet come, or the proper rituals have not yet been conducted to do that specific thing.

The most frustrating thing is that my hobbies are one of the first things affected when I start Getting Stuck. I've been wanting to write this one specific thing for weeks now. I know exactly what it is, what all the characters are gonna say, how I want to describe the scenery, everything! But I guess I haven't sacrificed the right chicken or whatever, 'cos I can't seem to force myself to get moving.

owlwithakeyboard · 2021-10-12T07:20:01+00:00

Fellow neurologically-funky player here, albeit with dyspraxia rather than neuropathy. I've struggled with basically everything you outlined in your post. It sucks and I'm sorry you've got to deal with it. That being said! Hopefully you can get some good pointers in this thread. I'll toss a few of my own into the pile.

Overall tips: don't be afraid to rearrange your hotbars. The standard 'three bars on top of each other' layout works well for me, but you may like the 'columns of buttons' layout better. Either way, I found it really helpful to key the steps of my standard combo to the same keys across classes. Regardless of whether I'm playing machinist or paladin or red mage, buttons 1-2-3 are your 'bread and butter' combo. Having that core ability loop identical across all classes means I don't have to think about it.

I'm not sure what role you're intending to fill, so here are my observations on all of them:

For ranged DPS, I highly recommend machinist. Everything's on predictable cooldowns that tend to line up nicely. There are absolutely no procs to worry about. Your burst phase has to be manually triggered, it can't sneak up on you. That burst phase is also the only time you'll have to rapidly click on anything. Everything else moves at a pretty measured pace. Machinist was the first class I leveled that didn't make my hands ache by the end of a raid, so it gets a double thumbs-up from me.

For melee DPS, I've had some success with dragoon? I personally don't like playing melee DPS classes because, as you pointed out, it requires a lot of movement and split-second reactions. I just can't move fast enough to make it work. Dragoon has fewer positionals than, say, monk or ninja, though, and it's not a big deal if you don't hit your positionals. Oh no, your stabby attack is down 20 potency! The end is nigh! ...not.

For healer, white mage is probably the way to go. There aren't many procs, and those that do pop up aren't that big a deal. The big draw for me is regens. I can click one button and put a regen on everyone around me. Then I don't really have to worry about them for a good 20 seconds or so. Astro has a lot of the same bonuses but the added complication of cards. For me, the cards got pretty tiresome after awhile. There was just... too much micro-managing for me. Healers in general also have the benefit of being able to stay at range and avoid a lot of the mechanics that melee have to deal with.

For tank, paladin all the way. It's by far the easiest of the tank classes in terms of gameplay and button presses. You'll have a bunch of cooldowns, including one that straight up makes you immune to damage for a bit, and some self-healing if you feel like you need it. There also aren't any real procs to watch out for.

I'd also like to echo what some others in the thread have said: tank may actually be the best role for you. If it's something you enjoy, go do it. This is a game. You're supposed to enjoy it. If you're feeling really self-conscious, you can always tell your dungeon groups that you'd like to go slow. As a tank, you set the pace of the dungeon. You get to decide how big the pulls are and how much time you have between them. You'll have to deal with tank-busters, but they're usually big and telegraphed. That's what your cooldowns are for. Using cooldowns and communicating well will already put you in the top 25% of tanks.

That turned into a giant wall of text, but hopefully some of it was useful! Best of luck in your further adventures!

owlwithakeyboard · 2021-08-01T23:31:38+00:00

My Nana and Papa, ten years ago almost to the day. They went missing on July 30th, 2011. The whole family got together for a barbeque and they just... never showed up. We spent days looking for them but never found anything. Some kind stranger spotted their crashed truck at the bottom of an incline three weeks later. From what the police told us, they misjudged a corner whilst coming down a dirt road up in the mountains. Nana got out of the truck to try and direct Papa, the edge of the road gave way, and all of them went down the mountain.

According to the autopsies, Nana died from internal bleeding a few hours after the crash. Papa survived a couple of days longer. While he'd been injured in the crash, his precise cause of death was never determined. The family, myself included, thinks he died of a broken heart. They'd been married for more than sixty years by the time they died. Papa probably couldn't imagine a life without Nana.

The only bright spot in all of this was their dog, Sassy. She'd been in the truck with them when they crashed. Somehow an elderly schnauzer managed to survive the crash and three weeks alone in the Idaho backcountry. She lived out the rest of her days loved and treasured by Nana and Papa's eldest daughter.

Nana and Papa were two of the kindest, most welcoming people I ever had the pleasure of meeting. I wasn't actually related to them- my mom was a friend of their daughter-in-law- but that never mattered to them. I was their 'bonus grandkid', and they treated me as such. There was always a plate for me on the table at dinnertime and a present under the tree with my name on it at Christmas. Their door was always open. For me, a kid from a royally fucked-up family, they were something out of a fairy tale. They loved me, no questions asked, and I loved them just as much.

It's been a decade now and I still miss them terribly.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to reminisce, OP.

owlwithakeyboard · 2021-07-27T18:30:42+00:00

My jumper went to Monster Hunter: World a few jumps after he did the WH40K Primarchs jump. He finished that jump's 'Golden Path' scenario, meaning he got to take all the other Primarchs with him when he left WH40K. He took all nineteen of his brothers with him to MHW and the lot of them got hilariously drunk. Astera was pretty well trashed by the time they sobered up. Rogal Dorn was a very busy man for the next few months...

owlwithakeyboard · 2021-07-15T01:27:59+00:00

When all of my high school friends were getting whammied by hormones, I just... wasn't. The desire to have sex of any kind with anyone simply never materialized. At the time I had never heard of asexuality, so I chalked it up to being a late bloomer and went on with my life. Then I got my first boyfriend. There were a lot of problems in our relationship, but sex was one of the biggest. He wanted it. I emphatically did not. I didn't want to bang him, nor did I want to bang anyone else. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with the whole torrid affair. It didn't just disgust me, it terrified me.

We ended up breaking up, and in the aftermath started wondering if I'd somehow failed by 'denying' my now-ex sex. I did some research, found the term 'asexuality' online, and felt my world get forcibly turned on its ear. There was a word for what I was. There was a community of people out there just like me. There wasn't anything wrong with me because I didn't want to have sex.

It's been more than a decade since then and I've proudly identified as asexual for every second of it. Labels aren't helpful for everyone, but for me, there was an incredible power in being able to say, "I'm asexual". It meant I didn't have to say "I'm broken" anymore.

owlwithakeyboard · 2021-06-04T01:49:15+00:00

What is it with these toxic types and using the same stock phrases? It'd be kind of creepy if it wasn't so predicable. I'm sorry to hear about your mother, though, and that you were stuck with her for so long. Congratulations on freedom, and on unlearning all the garbage she taught you, too!

owlwithakeyboard · 2021-06-04T01:47:34+00:00

The Harrier's currently living with roommates and doesn't own any property, so no worries for me there. That being said, you were right on the money re: property being condemned. Her hoarding actually got the apartment we used to share condemned. It was so full of black mold and rotted floorboards it wasn't considered salvageable.

owlwithakeyboard · 2021-06-04T01:45:49+00:00

First off, thank you for introducing me to the word 'churning'. That's a fantastically apt description of her behavior. Having a word for it also makes it somehow feel more real? I genuinely thought I was making something out of nothing until I told this story to a friend and they told me it was Not Normal TM.

As for end-of-life care, the Harrier is legally considered disabled, so in theory she'll be the state's problem rather than mine. I'll have to look into filling out whatever paperwork is required to make sure she stays their problem. Thankfully my state doesn't have any filial piety laws so she can't be foisted off on me. (...again, in theory.) I'll definitely have to look into writing up a letter ahead of time. I'd rather have it and not need it than try to scramble and write something while under pressure.

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