As a reader, it is instructive to find out what the author thinks of their own text, and whether and how their opinion of it disagrees with your opinion of it.
As a writer, it is instructive to find out what your readers see in your work that you did not deliberately put there. Close reading by someone who is not you may reveal your unconscious biases, or give you the choice of whether to lean into the deeper symbolism of your work.
Learn what you can change; work to change it for the better. Learn not to let what you can’t change destroy you; work to influence it in small ways that build up over time until you can change it. Learn patience with the world. Learn who you love; work to show them you love them. Learn who loves you; work to show them you appreciate their love. Learn patience with yourself. Work to clear a space for yourself where you can spend some time not working.
@Canageek Skyrim also does small-scale choice badly. It doesn't matter whether we help the Redguard political refugee or turn her in to the assassins hunting her; we get paid either way, and either way we come away with the feeling that we've helped the bad guy. It doesn't matter whether we kill the werewolf or help him; we've either murdered a mentally ill person or set him free to lose control and kill others.
@Canageek How does knowing your choices are meaningless make it *better*? When choices are meaningful, I can at least tell myself I'm making a difference in the direction of whichever cause I support. In Skyrim I don't even have that, though I pretend to
@Gargron What I would want a quote feature for is to say "@third_party you will like this" without bothering the original poster with the extra ping of a reply. What do you suggest as an alternative?
@gaditb Does anyone want to start a #homestuck instance that has all the characters as custom emoji? And maybe colored text options? How close to the look of the MSPA website can we push this?
@djsundog Argh I just got this tune out of my head
While we're here though, did you know it was written by a Jewish songwriting duo? One of them came up with the lyrics trying to think of cold things on a very hot day, and the 2 of them wrote the whole song in about 45 minutes.