I want to thank people who were talking about Blue Prince because I was able to recommend it to a friend who loves puzzles. she's enjoying it a lot.

I've been doing stuff in both Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero, but on the non-gacha front, I've started Disco Elysium. I haven't gotten very far but I'm really enjoying it even if not knowing how bad I'm messing up makes me a bit anxious. I picked Inland Empire as my main skill(?) too.

otherwise, I'm planning on playing more Fields of Mistria, now that they've updated again. I love that game with a passion, and I can't wait to see what more they add to it. I thought Stardew Valley was as good as it got, and while Fields of Mistria doesn't have multiplayer (and that's okay!) it ticks so many boxes for me, like for example, the shoujo laughs from Juniper spark so much joy. I don't enjoy the mines in SDV, but in FoM, I definitely do!

currently using Vivaldi and I love it, but eyeing a switch over to Floorp (fork of Firefox) when uBlock is officially done for in chrome browsers. I'll still need Vivaldi for some things, but I can't live with ads.

hey I used to love lifting weights when I was younger! I'm not entirely sure I was doing it right, but I can relate to it being more fun. I hope you keep following that joy, and the raves! I've never been to one, but I don't usually go out, hahaha.

it's been a while since I've been here but I saw this post (and am very late to it) but just wanted to also voice that I'm disabled for mental health reasons. I've always struggled with viewing my own personal state as being disabled. but when I look back on times where my anxiety made me so physically ill that I couldn't go to work without having to find ways to hide it (or I had to call in a lot), I realize how hard it is for me to function like a "normal person." which is the biggest thing I struggle with. my partner has to remind me that what I think is "normal" is a weird idealized version of something that doesn't really exist. everyone has issues, I just happen to need more help than others.

I'm on quite the cocktail of medications for a variety of things. some are physical issues but there's mental health stuff there too. without them I really can't function, and as it is I need help from the person I live with sometimes to do everyday things. I've been getting better, but it's been a long road.

what I'm saying is, you're absolutely not alone. I'm one of the many people here with you.

So I'm pretty new to self hosting as well, but I use Tailscale. They also have the option of working with Mullvad, though I'm not 100% on how that works. Tailscale is a VPN itself, and it's allowed me to access all of my self hosted stuff everywhere, including on my phone. It's been really nice, though I understand people might not want to use corporate methods.

Gluetun to my knowledge, when I use it, is just for my qbittorrent stack to access my VPN.

If you don't want to use something like Tailscale (there's also a self hosted option called Headscale, and others like Zerotier and I think Netbird?) there's opening ports and using reverse proxies. I would be really careful about that one, but hopefully I've given you some options to look into.

Oh boy my favorite game series!

Admittedly the ones I've played the most are 3, 4 and 5, although I've tried 2 a couple times a while back. I wouldn't mind doing it again, I just don't remember why I kept bouncing off of it.

3 is my favorite, and admittedly I played it at a younger age than I probably should have, as a teenager. I couldn't bring myself to finish it after getting the ending spoiled to me online, but I always had a fondness for the game and I preordered Reload as soon as I could. I will finish it this time. Mitsuru my love.

4 is my second favorite. Kanji and Naoto in particular really always stood out to me and I used to go by Kanji online for a long time. I made a character who spun into an oc with just traits inspired by him too, who is one of my favorites to write.

5 is fine but my least favorite of the bunch, even though I know a lot of people who only like that one. I felt the pacing was poor and the escalation of the severity of what the adults did wasn't really going in order. I also didn't feel any real attachment to the characters, in sharp contrast to the other two games I've played.

It still irks me every time a teacher and student romance comes up, or the times the games have been phobic. I wish we had the option to maybe pick between a masc/fem/androgynous looking protag and slap our own pronouns on them and romance who we wanted out of the options regardless of those selections, but I know that's not ever the game Persona is gonna be. I'm happy they included content warnings at least in Reload.

I don't believe it does, as someone stuck in hoyoverse hell. They "get away with" quite a lot that I'm surprised censors don't challenge them on besides.

I don't know anything about other Chinese games though.

My english lavender almost died, but I realized in time that it was getting too much water. It's thinned out some in the center but seems to be growing outwards pretty well and it's blooming again. I'll take it as a win.

My aloe and haworthia are still going pretty strong! I'll have to take a picture of them sometime. The aloe developed a brown center but is still growing and there are more stalks(?) growing out of the center even, so I think it's okay still?

My mom recently got a tropical hibiscus that I'm not sure I've mentioned before. I'm not a big fan of it, because it blooms one day and the next day the blooms are on the ground.

Man, I love her music so much! Thank you for reminding me of it, I'm gonna go give her a listen again.

The Tetris cover is one of my favorites. I also have a soft spot for the Pokemon and Super Mario Bros one.

I...went back to Path of Exile.

It was originally just to see how things had changed, but a lot changed and it's very different. Not that it answered all of my personal issues with it, but I resigned myself to using a build guide. I've been enjoying it, surprisingly. Enough that, when I haven't been out of the house, I usually play it daily.

Progress is going really slow because I'm not that good at the game anymore. But I also made loot filter sounds that spark joy, and I've been managing even if I'd like to be at endgame. I'm on act 6 out of 10.

My partner is also playing but doesn't have a lot of experience. So I've been trying to help, which makes it more enjoyable to me because I like to teach.

Not sure if I'm fully going back yet. But I like the league mechanic and am having a good time.

I decided to try Zenless Zone Zero. I'm already a Honkai Star Rail player and I used to play Genshin Impact, although I gave up Genshin because I was irritated with how they handle story and characters. I originally wasn't going to try ZZZ, but thought it wouldn't hurt anything. Worst case scenario, I drop it and go back to solely playing HSR.

I'm really enjoying ZZZ's combat, even if I don't feel like I'm doing it "right" or optimally yet. The story is nice so far, I love the Persona vibes it gives me, especially Persona 4. Wasn't expecting that. I got the guaranteed S rank character I wanted (Lycaon!) and I'm skipping the first limited character because... I really don't like the maid outfit thing. It wasn't for me on Noelle in Genshin, and it's not for me here. I love her design otherwise and she's a shark girl with a shark tail, which is super neat. She has a casual outfit I like a lot. Just. Cannot. Do. The. Maid. Thing.

I might pull on the second half banner. But I haven't met the character yet so I have no idea if I want her either. It's a bit frustrating waiting, because my teams are kinda a mess due to lack of characters. But it's okay. The story comes first and that has my interest so far.

I watched a friend play Sea of Stars and really enjoyed it! I hope it's a good adventure for you the rest of the way.

Something to note if you're in it for combat, the difficulty plateaus a bit towards the middle/end. And if you like this one, their other game, The Messenger, is tied to it lore wise, although it's a different genre.

Also the music slaps.

it's been really hot here, but I've gotten into watering all of the outside plants every day (I water my aloe and haworthia once a week) and they seem to be doing pretty well! even the tropical hibiscus, somehow.

I'm especially happy about my lavender and the roses, I've mentioned previously I think that roses are special to me because of my grandmother (my grandfather would grow them in the backyard in these huge rose bushes for her and bring them in) and these are the first ones to ever grow and thrive. they're not purely red roses, but I do really like the pattern on them.

uploading images keeps erroring out and I'm not sure how to put an image in here from imgur, so here's a link to the picture of the lavender and roses instead.

I feel you. I dislike most of the pyro characters honestly! and also, oof, Thoma requires ascension materials from a special huge questline island in Inazuma. he's kind of a pain to level. the pyro four star I like the most is a tie between Gaming and Yanfei. Yoimiya is my favorite 5 star one, and she works well with Thoma, actually.

you can probably guess who some of my favorites are based on profile pic and banner (eventually, anyway, they're both in Inazuma.)

who do you have your eyes on that you want, anyone besides Diluc and Shenhe? I don't know what the banners are currently.

yep! here it is on the steam workshop and I hope it helps you out! if you want the video series too, I can shoot that your way, it doesn't really spoil anything and I didn't know 95% of the mechanics even existed.

live and drink friend!

genshin is surprisingly good (I was also wow'd when I started playing), but ultimately I found the story lacking in a lot of key places for me (justice for Inazuma's story especially!) which ultimately led me to quit for now. I played for two years, and have a pretty well established account. however, I have really bad fatigue issues and wasn't able to keep up as well with the adventuring requirements, such as having to unlock chests for free primogems.

I think playing it until you're tired of the grating parts is a totally valid way to experience it. especially because it's free!

like the other comment, I tried Honkai: Star Rail and honestly I love it so much more. it is turn-based combat, but I feel like the writing is better, and they treat their characters better storywise (in contrast to genshin, which imho the hangouts for four stars are not comparable to the story quests some four stars get.) it's my gacha game of choice, and while I've had my nitpicks, I have those with every game I play pretty much. I also agree it's more f2p friendly.

these are all just my opinion tho! I hope you enjoy your time with the game and that you get the characters you want. may your pulls be blessed!

I'm absolutely going to do my best to understand and not copy/paste without doing that. I don't like doing things to my computer that I don't know what is happening, so that makes sense to me! I already ran into that issue plenty of times with my servers, so I'm trying to go all in now.

thank you!

thank you for the resources! I think I have VeronicaExplains noted down already, but the other ones are new to me. I'll give them a look!

thank you for this!

I too have brain fog and memory issues in general. I'm glad to hear that systems seem simple to understand but have the high ceiling, I love that kind of thing. I just need to push on I think and try LE again, when I get my desktop back.

what is your class of choice in LE?

story is usually an important part for me! it's one part of PoE that never impressed me. I might still check out Diablo 4, and I'm glad you laid out a lot of things for me. most of the stuff I could find online was still harping on previous issues that I now know some have been addressed.

funnily enough, I used to love running "lab" (I believe it's short for "labyrinth" but my memory is shot and it's been a long time) in Path of Exile, which was running through traps to rush to a boss. they nerfed that route shortly before I quit, too. but you got a lot of rewards at the end that had the potential to be good, and a blessing on existing equipment that you picked. a shame that boss farming in Diablo 4 isn't as fun, but it's something I'll keep in mind when a sale rolls around.

sorting was probably one of the things I disliked the most in PoE, I could never grasp what was worth using or selling that well. goes hand-in-hand with my inability to roll with theorycrafting builds, so to hear Diablo 4 eases that some is nice.