The Gaming Den

I'm going to side with Maxus on this one. Tsundere characters don't usually stop being prickly and irritable towards the main character, although they frequently do increase the proportion of friendly scenes.

Also, it's not just a romance thing; the same general characterization often shows up with two same-gender heterosexual characters. I think it's a way to keep around a character who has an antagonistic relationship with the main character and explaining why they stick around. Also, in combat-centric stories they'll show up to help when the chips are down, and their reactions to getting profusely thanked by the hero are hilarious.

If it were about the main character changing them, I'd expect them to stop acting that way by the end of the story, but generally even if they wind up with the hero they still show the same personality traits, albit less frequently.

FrankTrollman wrote:I find it literally impossible to believe that you've never fantasized about an actor or actress (pornographic or otherwise), despite having actually no idea what their real life personality is like.

Not knowing leaves a blank for you to fill in, whereas a woman actually being a jerk to you personally does not.

Tsundere is just an exaggeration of the love-hate relationship, which you see all the time in Western comedy-romances.

You might as well ask why Han Solo and Leia fall for each other despite being insufferable jackasses to each other most of the time.

Frank wrote:Are you telling me that your sour grapes effect is so hard that if you found out that an actress you masturbated to went around clicking the like button on Orson Scott Card blog posts that you'd go back in time to retroactively include a less paranoid and homophobic woman in your wank dreams?

Well, you can't retroactively do any such thing. Knowledge not yet held cannot influence your actions, decisions, or opinions. There's always the possibility that a friend or lover is secretly a serial killer or something, and finding out that they are a serial killer does not retroactively mean you never liked them, but it's very likely to mean you will stop liking them.

E.g.: reading the list of famous scientologists on wikipedia is a real bummer, and it turned a lot of previously watchable actors into people I will never be able to take seriously in anything they do.

To anyone else in the kind of industry where this happens:

Does it get easier, communicating with people who are intellectually challenged? Or am I just not cut out even for the "taking messages" and "explaining things to students who wander in" tasks of this job?

Equal parts discomfort and "I actually can't make out what this person is saying".

I worked for a while in a long-term care facility - most of the clients were people with mental impediments and old people with cognitive losses.

In my experience, you learn to read and understand specific individuals fairly quickly.

I imagine that at some point you learn both what the likely questions are and get better at pattern recognition, but that's certainly more subtle.

EDIT: as to the discomfort, it never went away for me. In fact, I'm pretty sure that job did a number on my empathy levels.

Is there any recourse against ebay sellers who won't ship to places they said they would ship? Like, a US seller who bitches about having to ship to Pittsburgh, a week after the package should have arrived?

You can almost certainly get eBay to make them give your money back, assuming you have proof they said they would ship and proof they have not.

Does anyone have a hypothesis as to why American Millenials have a much more ambivalent viewpoint towards abortion (about that on the level of their elders) than they do on nearly every other social issue? I think that this begs for an explanation in light of the fact that, oh, Millenials are significantly more non-religious and pro-feminist than previous generations.

Millenials were raised by television and Hollywood. Seriously, look at movies like Knocked Up and Juno. Abortion is never even considered as a real and viable option by the majority of female characters, and is almost always presented in a negative light.

It feels like TvTropes should've had a post about the phenomenon before they descended into hugbox hysterics.

I've talked to my [a-religious, millennial] sister a little bit about that. Here's what I got:

[*]She thinks abortions should be available because she understands that there are situations that put the health, sanity, and economic future of women at risk.
[*]But the idea of killing babies sucks.
[*]So, she doesn't want to put herself in a position to need an abortion, and highly supports sex education and birth control.

And I understand all of that. Before I got pregnant, I was scared of having a kid. Economically speaking, I was in a bad place. Personally speaking, I thought that I was too selfish and would end up being abusive. I was not ready in any way, shape, or form and fully intended to exercise my option to abort.

And then I got pregnant. All of a sudden, the choice wasn't so easy. I agonized about the decision for a month. I was a walking ball of agitation and apprehension, and I had no clue what to do. I didn't even tell anyone about it because I was afraid of them weighing in on the subject. Nature solved the problem by aborting my embryo for me.

It wasn't until that moment that I realized that I had something at all. I was actually sad that I miscarried. I cried a lot. While I didn't seek out pregnancy, I knew that if it happened again, abortion was not the choice I would make.

God didn't have anything to do with this. When I was facing the decision of abort, retry, ignore, it was about my ability to be a mom. It was about my fears and my insecurities and my health. It was Me versus The Baby.

This is one of the shittiest choices I've ever faced, and I'm actually grateful that I miscarried so I didn't have to make it. Much like it is a mistake to think that people without religion cannot be altruistic and socially serving, it's a mistake to think that women without religion are liberated from the choice of Me versus The Baby.

My sister's stance makes a lot of sense because she's grown up in a country where abortion is - and has always been - an option, even if limited. Roe v. Wade is taken for granted.

But the legality of it doesn't mean that you're not actually ending the life of a future human being. Sky fairies don't need to come down from the sky to tell you this and make you feel guilty about it (but they will if you clap your hands and believe!).

The best way to not have to deal with the question is to prevent yourself from having to make the choice. So rather than face abortion, the younger generation is all about contraception all the time for anyone and everyone.

Ancient History wrote:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... idAbortion

Fuck you, that link stole 4 hours of my life.

Maj, that actually makes a lot of sense. I mean, I personally deal with the question of killing babies by being a terrible person who doesn't give a shit and classifies them as parasitic growths prior to birth, but yeah, contraception is generally much cheaper and easier and lower impact than abortion and is seriously the better way to prevent unwanted children.

I think it's perfectly acceptable to be personally against abortion for yourself, and yet still be completely pro choice and think that having it be legal is important.

It's an agonizing decision I will never have to make. I dodged it for my life time. But I would never judge someone who did make that decision. Even for what I might perceive as shallow reasons. Because, I am not the person making the decision, and never will be.

The problem is that the Christian Right is
A) Anti Sex Education.
B) Anti Contraception.
C) Anti Abortion.
D) Anti Child welfare and food programs.
E) Anti Healthcare for Poor Pregnant women and Children.

You cannot be all of these things at once without causing serious social issues. If you think every life is sacred, then you need to take care of them after they leave the womb. From what I can tell the Christian Right believes that Life begins at conception, and ends at birth.

I've personally assisted with dozens of abortions. If performed early in pregnancy, it's fast, easy, and relatively painless. The anesthesia prep takes longer than the procedure, and the women can seriously walk home.

However, every abortion creates a miscarriage, and miscarriages suck. Not all the hormones catch up to the fact that you aren't pregnant any more at the same time and it feels like a crushing nightmare of despair and loss that can last several weeks or even a few months. The psychological impact is much much greater than the physical impact. Basically, when you're pregnant, your body produces a whole lot of endorphins to get you through the agonizing process of remodeling your pelvis and eventually pissing out a water melon. When you miscarry, that endorphin process cuts out. So it's very similar chemically to heroin withdrawal.

I can totally see hwy women would not want to go through that.

-Username17

TheJerkStore wrote:

Ancient History wrote:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... idAbortion

Fuck you, that link stole 4 hours of my life.

You're welcome.

TheJerkStore wrote:

Ancient History wrote:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... idAbortion

Fuck you, that link stole 4 hours of my life.

it should probably come with this as the disclaimer:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... inYourLife
:P ^^

Stahlseele wrote:

TheJerkStore wrote:

Ancient History wrote:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... idAbortion

Fuck you, that link stole 4 hours of my life.

it should probably come with this as the disclaimer:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... inYourLife
^^

You think you're funny, don't you?

Stahlseele wrote:

TheJerkStore wrote:

Ancient History wrote:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... idAbortion

Fuck you, that link stole 4 hours of my life.

it should probably come with this as the disclaimer:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... inYourLife
^^

You think you're funny, don't you?

Damn, I miss the old TvTropes. But it's never coming back, is it? Even if they got rid of the creeps and pedos, it's still just a boring and bland hugbox.

I also see that the TvTropes article on Rationalwiki was scrubbed to hell and back. Fucking revisionist tropers.

No.
I know for a fact that i am funny.
People who think otherwise are wrong.
Usually because their humor is broken.

Exactly how bad was the human genetic bottleneck tens of thousands of years ago? I'm pretty sure we're not cheetah-level bad, but it's still pretty bad. So I hear.

Well, They actually found an Eve fossil that shares mydocondrial DNA with pretty much every woman on earth.

They can group mydocondrial DNA back to something like 7 different disparate women. That seems like a pretty big bottle neck.
If we actually had a way of tracing male DNA backwards as effectively, we would probably find similar issues.