2D8HP's extended mea culpa and Random Banter #218

[Insane Jeenyus]

Huh. I would've thought you'd have noticed something like that quite some time ago

I just passed a mirror and I just saw I have been polymorphed from a pixie.

[Honest Tiefling]

What does it mean, then?

I admire your ability to ignore fashion trends that are older than a lot of forum-goers.

[2D8HP]

I admire your ability to ignore fashion trends that are older than a lot of forum-goers.

*does arithmetic*

Oh jeez, you're right!

[enderlord99]

I admire your ability to ignore fashion trends that are older than a lot of forum-goers.

"Ignore" is probably the wrong word. I'm just oblivious.

I mean, I do that too, but it's not what's happening here.

[HalfTangible]

Doesn't "goth" just mean "depression fandom?" Why would a mental disorder need a fandom?

Goth is a particular fashion style that focuses heavily on dark colors, predominantly black and purple. It is associated with rebellion against authority and (ironically) tradition/groupthink.

It has nothing to do with depression, beyond the fact that rebellious teenagers are often also depressed.

[WarKitty]

A lot of the confusion I think is that many of us goth types are attracted to things that a lot of other people find creepy or depressing.

Also, I feel I should point out as a goth I am pretty well past the rebellious teenager stage.

[Goblin Slayer]

I thought goth was about gloomy cloths that use dark color. And a glum out look of life with the excess usage of metaphor that are tied to death, darkness, shadows and sadness. And the tendency to use those metaphor gives the impression that the goth is depressed.

Also gothic Lolita is best goth I'll fite anyone on that.

[2D8HP]

The "Goths" I remember of the mid and late 1980's seemed more cheerful and less morose than most teen and twenty-somethings of those years did to me, but I knew a lot more Goth girls than guys, though my best friend (and DM) was a guy who looked Goth, and he was cheerful, but he still called himself "New Wave".

But my allegiance was to "Punk" so I didn't have an inside view, even if I spent the night.

[Dexam]

How many time-traveling doctors and/or doctors with time powers do you know of? I can name four, assuming The Doctor only counts once.

On the off chance anyone was wondering, the other 3 are Doc Brown, Doctor Strange, and Doc Scratch.

All doctors are time-travelling¹, it's just that the vast majority of them are restricted to "forwards, at a constant rate of one second per second".





1 = Just like everything else

[enderlord99]

All doctors are time-travelling¹, it's just that the vast majority of them are restricted to "forwards, at a constant rate of one second per second".





1 = Just like everything else

That doesn't really count, but okay.

ION:

Spoiler: The Green Goblin is Bowser

Show

[Algeh]

Well, my current shopping list reads:

• Rubber gloves
• Sleeping pills
• Mop
• Spray bottle

This means that (a) I am probably going to end up on some kind of watchlist and (b) I'm tempted to add "condoms" and "canning wax" to the list just to make it a more interesting watchlist to be on.

[Goblin Slayer]

Needs a bottle of bleach, some cheap towels, 10 feet of rope, industrial size garbage bags and maybe get a meat clever.

[HalfTangible]

A lot of the confusion I think is that many of us goth types are attracted to things that a lot of other people find creepy or depressing.

Also, I feel I should point out as a goth I am pretty well past the rebellious teenager stage.

*shrug* I only brought 'teenager' up because of the connection to depression/rebellion.

I don't pretend to be an expert.

[Goblin Slayer]

On the topic of goth what qualifies as gothic architecture?

[Algeh]

Needs a bottle of bleach, some cheap towels, 10 feet of rope, industrial size garbage bags and maybe get a meat clever.

Sadly, (a) I already bought the bleach at Costco earlier today and (b) I just realized that I also need to pick up a big sack of store brand bran flakes, which kind of breaks the implied theme of the list up a bit. Alas.

[Tvtyrant]

On the topic of goth what qualifies as gothic architecture?

Inspired by high medieval cathedrals. Lots of spires, statues, dark (because of wear and smoke) stone, etc.

Gothic in art overall is (from old art history memories of mine) a subset of the Romantic period.

[Knaight]

Goth is a particular fashion style that focuses heavily on dark colors, predominantly black and purple. It is associated with rebellion against authority and (ironically) tradition/groupthink.

That second association is pretty standard for basically any subculture with a twinge of the counterculture, particularly if it's heavy on younger people. There's a very predictable series of events that produces a very predictable set of criticisms. The short version.

1: A subculture with similar values that disagree with the predominant culture pops up. Hippies, goth, nerds, whatever.
2: Interactions within this subculture lead to the development of cultural markers, because that's basically what cultures do.
3: The predominant culture notices these markers clashing with the standards of the predominant culture.
4: The predominant culture spins an overly simplified narrative where the only thing linking the group is that they're trying to be "different", which conveniently centers the predominant culture in this narrative while eliding the very existence of the subculture.
5: Tedious jokes about people trying to be different ending up all looking the same come up, based on the misconception in part 4.

It gets old, as do closely affiliated patterns. For instance, step 4 nicely mirrors more than a few claims about "rebellion", where affiliation with one cultural group is reframed not as a positive affiliation but instead as just a reaction to another, and the term "rebellion" is selected largely to suggest that the negative reaction to the other cultural group doesn't have any legitimacy.

This can crop up in weird places. For instance, I have seen multiple people take extremely well to an academic environment, naturally fitting in with that culture and its values (starting with just being open to intellectualism and friendly to analytical perspectives), only for this to be condemned as rebellion against subcultural groups hostile to academia, and pretty consistently groups which have fairly directly opposed values, starting with veneration of believing what you're told by the proper authorities instead of having the temerity to think.

[Anonymouswizard]

Well it's not really discrimination mostly it's just because things are so far away in the US. The UK is roughly forty times smaller than the US. So a lot of things are very far apart. If you live out in the suburbs, you'll probably have a minimum of a thirty minute commute every day. And that's without traffic. Now if you were living here, you'd probably want to move into one of the larger cities in the US, which can have reasonable mass transit.

Yeah, I'm thankfully very much a city boy. My parents continually try to drag me to the country for the weekend* (joke's on them, I can get an endless supply of Saturday shifts), but there's these weird mooing things that apparently aren't public transport.

* They don't actually, they just make sure I know the offer's open.

Goth is a particular fashion style that focuses heavily on dark colors, predominantly black and purple.

Fun fact, when I was just wearing dark clothes and growing my hair long (which I'd love to do again, but I work in a kitchen) adults would sometimes think I was a goth despite not actually wearing any gothic fashion (I just like to wear black, sue me).


In university my 'style' as far as most people thought of it was my glasses, the way I sit and talk, and the fact I had shoulder length curly hair (very loose curls, but still curls). Also the fact that I have skin horrifically pastypale enough to make Chinese ladies jealous.

So I think I might be a xenophile. Not just as in 'likes the alien', but as in 'sexually attracted to the alien'. I don't think I've asked out a single person of my ethnicity or nationality in my life, and tend to find them 'meh' compared to foreigners. Or am I just noticing how horribly unattractive English people are?

[factotum]

Inspired by high medieval cathedrals.

That's Gothic Revival rather than plain Gothic, isn't it?

[FinnLassie]

Wow, seven pages already. Picking up back to the old pace? (at least to the pace that I entered into back in 2013)

[DataNinja]

Wow, seven pages already. Picking up back to the old pace? (at least to the pace that I entered into back in 2013)

Apparently all you need is the right curator or something. Or maybe the planets are aligned.

[WarKitty]

There is at least some evidence that people who have been depressed are attracted to goth. So it's probably not totally spurious, but it's not nearly as simple as goths are all depressed. At the same time, the subculture has historically tended to be more open to the idea of mental illness, so there probably has been a bit of a support group aspect.

I do know I tend to carry an accompanying attitude of "Sometimes life sucks, sometimes you didn't do anything to cause it and you can't fix it, and you have to figure out how to manage with what you've got." I know that puts some people of because they see it as pessimistic or depressing. Personally I find it somewhat liberating.

The teenager aspect also probably has to do with that most adults tone things down one way or another to get to work, and it's less common to spend large amounts of time on your appearance unless you're in a profession where that's super important.

[Strigon]

I do know I tend to carry an accompanying attitude of "Sometimes life sucks, sometimes you didn't do anything to cause it and you can't fix it, and you have to figure out how to manage with what you've got." I know that puts some people of because they see it as pessimistic or depressing. Personally I find it somewhat liberating.

Do you really catch flak for that? Because that just sounds like basic-level maturity to me.
Really, to call that acknowledgement pessimistic or depressing means calling Picard pessimistic and depressing. Whether or not you agree with his general philosophy, I can't see how he could be considered either of those.

Unless, of course, that is the sum total of your outlook on life; I can see their point in that case. But to simply acknowledge that life isn't 100% fair all the time, and you have to deal with that, just seems like common sense to me.

[Tvtyrant]

That's Gothic Revival rather than plain Gothic, isn't it?

The problem is that Gothic was a pejorative word for a very wide set of styles in the high medieval period, the word being backwards applied from the fifteenth century onward.

Having an external buttress system or an interior one greatly changes the building design, St. Chappelle looks silly from the outside but has a massive unified interior and Notre Dame is smooth outside but a mess inside for having internal buttresses (leading to those dark alcoves.)

They do share groin vault as central design concepts, but renassiance churches often did as well.

[WarKitty]

Do you really catch flak for that? Because that just sounds like basic-level maturity to me.
Really, to call that acknowledgement pessimistic or depressing means calling Picard pessimistic and depressing. Whether or not you agree with his general philosophy, I can't see how he could be considered either of those.

Unless, of course, that is the sum total of your outlook on life; I can see their point in that case. But to simply acknowledge that life isn't 100% fair all the time, and you have to deal with that, just seems like common sense to me.

Let's just say I think a lot of people are really good at knowing exactly how to solve situations they've never been in, or at assuming since they personally have always had the resources to avoid certain situations that anyone who's in a superficially similar situation can deploy the same resources to get the same result.

I've had a relatively high level of crap in my life for someone of my age and general location. I think it scares people a bit because I accept that a lot of it I really couldn't do anything about - or if I could the alternatives weren't clearly better.

See my occasional rant about the magic of boundaries. Not that I think they aren't a good concept in general, but that sometimes it's going to cost a lot to actually have them in a particular relationship and it can be a rational choice to decide that putting up with someone who's way overstepping is better than the alternative.

[Peelee]

Let's just say I think a lot of people are really good at knowing exactly how to solve situations they've never been in, or at assuming since they personally have always had the resources to avoid certain situations that anyone who's in a superficially similar situation can deploy the same resources to get the same result.

How dare you besmirch the noble profession of Armchair General? I'm shocked, shocked I say! Well, not that shocked.

[Anonymouswizard]

Sometimes the members of this forum get me to do weird things. Thanks to everybody's favourite nondeceitful infernally heritaged forum member I have decided to abandon my planned character for a campaign and actually make the Anonymous Wizard an actual D&D character (I've had the core idea for years, but could never get it to feel right).

Spoiler: Character concept, off topic

Show

Currently referred to as Nommy in out of character conversation, because he doesn't trust the party enough to give out his real name (I'm going to let them nickname him as they wish, he's going by Stephen at the moment), the Anonymous Wizard is on the run from [wizard university] because at his graduation the staff suddenly realised that the name he had given was a false one designed to make him not look like the son of a master forger. So Nommy BTh is on the run under an assumed name, currently Stephen Copperfield although previous aliases include Daniel Blackstone and Fredderick Grant, because the university wishes to interrogate him in order to find out how he managed to enroll under the name Peter Williams.

The build is just pretty straight Tiefling Wizard stuff, high scores in Intelligence, Charisma, and Dexterity, with the Charlatan background to represent growing up as the child of somebody who forged identities. While on the run he tries to right wrongs he sees and spread knowledge, especially the ability to cast spells.

Spoiler: Real Name

Show

Spoiler: seriously, if you're in my group keep out of this

Show

Mr Andromedus Vitalus BTh

[2D8HP]

Sometimes the members of this forum get me to do weird things. Thanks to everybody's favourite nondeceitful infernally heritaged forum member I have decided to abandon my planned character for a campaign and actually make the Anonymous Wizard an actual D&D character....

Who is that masked Tiefling?


Congrats on the new Avatar, it looks fantastic!

[Peelee]

Now that's a snazzy avatar!

[WarKitty]

Y'all are making me feel like I need a new avatar. But I also kinda like mine...