Oh actually! I'm not sure if anyone here would have any leads on this (nor whether this will be read for a month, as we all seem to stagger our logins pretty well!) but I have a friend who's making a documentary series on game communities (both in games and around game makers - he's done Doom and ZZT, for instance), and he's interested in covering both the Western and Japanese RPGMaker communities. For each episode he generally interviews one or two people and they'll act as kind of oral historians / guides for their community. Anyway! I was wondering if anyone has a window into the Japanese side of the community? Or any topics / people you think might be good for the Western community, though I think he already has someone in mind!

need dietcoke in here to start solving some of this. he's a nuclear engineer or something now I think? during CHOP/CHAZ I thought of him bc I think he was in that general area, and I was really hoping CHOP/CHAZ would get their hands on some enriched uranium

I think if you zoom out enough it definitely seems like everything is irreversibly going to shit, but I think that this is, and I'm really sorry if I sound overly simplistic here and I don't mean to be dismissive, a metaphor for our own mortality. but the world's always been going to shit, rome fell and yet we have better pasta now than ever, didn't even have tomatoes back then let alone pomodoro. tomato was cultivated for millennia by the people who lived on the continents now called America, long before the culture of people who eventually made Italian food knew the others existed. the world is more than anyone can manage, so in order to not live an empty life in hopelessness you zoom in and focus on what you can change. but then we're constantly confronted with externalities that make us zoom out further and further and start the process over again. it's a mandlebrot set, just like everything.

ever notice thoughts form like fractals? have you had that kind of connection with someone where at times it's almost like the barrier that separates you from being two different people or beings dissolves and you'll have a conversation that rises and falls like a mandlebrot set, and a long time passes and you haven't even consciously been using words or inhabiting physical space? ever think, as you zoom back out and the room materializes around you and you realize your throat is dry, that if you focus the hardest you ever have in your life you can form concrete thoughts that represent the true, pure form of this other that you've just witnessed and communed with, but it speeds away as fast as the world returns? tell me you have please!

Hello everyone. Just checking in letting everyone know that I’m doing well. I’ve had quite a few life changes in the last few years. I realized I was raised in a cult so I left that, came out to myself and the rest of my family, moved out and got my own place, joined a support group for people from said cult, met a guy who I instantly clicked with, met him in person since we lived in different countries, decided to live together, got married, bought a house, settled in and now we have a kitten. Life is good, although it’s been years since I’ve touched Rm2k3... Oh well, what can you do?