The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread

[MNblockhead]

In another group set up to discuss a specific game system, some people seem to be very concerned that everyone in the group properly "honor" a particular contributor. I mean, I like the guy and all, but I don't put any of the creators of my media on a pedestal. If I'm in a group about a particular game system, I'm there to talk about the game system; spending pages of posts and comments talking about how much you respect a particular creator seems... I don't know, unhealthy, maybe? Like, people are people -- with flaws and merits and all that. These posts smack of some weird virtue signaling that I don't understand.

Makes me miss Harlan Ellison. Keeps the creator/fan relationship in perspective. I wonder how he would have done had he had to start his career in the social media age.


I have to admit to sometimes getting like you describe with Gary Gygax. In the 80s, during the Satanic Panic, he was like the sane, understanding, uncle defending your weirdness. I watched and taped and many times rewatched his 60 Minutes interview (which was a hit piece, but everything Gary said really spoke to me at that time). He was the creator that helped bring to the world a hobby that means so much to me. So I have still have strong feelings for the guy, despite his many foilables and that can make me defensive when I read some of the more over-wrought posts trashing him.

I did meet and play with him once at a Gen Con in Milwaukee in the late 80s. But that was the year Cyborg Commando came out and he was running demo games of it. That saved me from a life of hero worship.

 

[MNblockhead]

Talk about nostalgia. When I was young the Sunday paper funny pages were better!

 

[Cadence]

Talk about nostalgia. When I was young the Sunday paper funny pages were better!

Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, and Farside!

 

[MNblockhead]

Luckily the word wasn't invented until the mid-1700s which is well after the tech-level D&D tries to pseudo-emulate...

Edit: Also, luckily, for the definition, we're in the era of Wikipedia and not Meriam-Webster.

Yeah, another excuse to check the OED. And I'm glad I did, I learned a new favorite word:

1. 1756
   

   At least it is thus Scheuchzer endeavours to vindicate the nostalgia, pathopatridalgia, or the heimweh, i. e. home-sickness, with which those of Bern are especially afflicted.

   translation of J. G. Keyssler, Travels vol. I. 141

Johann Georg Keyssler • Travels through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, and Lorrain • 1st edition, 1756–1757 (4 vols.).​

London: Printed for A. Linde and T. Field, ESTC T089052

OED doesn't have an entry for pathopatridalgia, but Haggard Hawks explains it as "[a] less well known synonym for nostalgia—namely patridalgia, or pathopatridalgia—derives from the Latin word for ‘father’, and so literally describes a painful longing for one’s ‘fatherland’."

That site also explains that the word nostalgia was originally a medial term. "When it first appeared in the language in the 1700s, nostalgia was a purely medical term, considered for a long time to be a temporary form of insanity that would seize upon those who had been in unfamiliar surroundings for too long." Apparently it didn't take on a primary meaning of a sentimental longing for home and familiar surroundings until the 1900s.

Paul Jones, the author of the blog Haggard Hawks doesn't give any citations (boo!) but he does have a Master's degree in linguistics, so I'm willing to be credulous.

So there you have it @el-remmen is using "nostalgia" in an older sense. Certain, we've all come across posts that seem to have been written by those who have found themselves in unfamiliar surroundings and its driving them mad.

 

[MNblockhead]

Speaking of nostalgia, here's a story about my dad.

My dad and I were hanging out one summer day, running some errands in town. I was about 8 years old, maybe 9, which would have put him in his late 30s/early 40s. We stopped at a gas station to fill up the truck, and he returned with two bottles of root beer and two small bags of peanuts.

"Here, let me show you something," he said, and he dumped his pack of peanuts into his bottle of root beer. Then after the fizzing had calmed down, he took a long drink from the bottle, making sure to get some of the salted peanuts along with it. "Ah, that takes me back," he said, chewing the peanuts. "Give it a try!"

I took a sip of the half-flat/half-fizzy, half-sweet/half-salty, half-liquid/half-solid concoction and grimaced. "Oh," I flinched and shook my head. "I don't like it very much."

"Ah well," he said, and took his bottle back. "I like it. It was my favorite when I was your age."

"I like the sweet peanuts but not the salty root beer," I told him.

"Well I'm glad you tried it at least." He took another drink/bite. "That means you learned something about yourself. Most people are afraid to do even that little."

Your dad's cool. My dad forced me to play out his good old days by making me work on my grandparent's farm on the weekends and summer.

 

[MNblockhead]

I look back fondly on the days when the phone was yellow and on the wall with a spin dial and a long spirally cord. They didn't cause these problems back then in the good old days!

The good old days of rotary phones, with no speaker phones, when your index finger and neck would get sore and not your thumbs.

 

[MNblockhead]

If the phone wasn't black with a fixed trumpet mouthpiece and exposed bell it wasn't the old days.

A BELL!? You younguns and your bells and ringers.

 

[niklinna]

 

[Hussar]

And, with that, I do demonstrate that from time to time I do possess just enough self awareness to click that "unwatch" button on a thread that I know I won't be able to talk about.

 

[billd91]

It's amazing what a difference spin makes to some people.