As we approach Christmas, in keeping with the tradition of giving each other gifts, we have been gifted a comedy spectacle. I hope you enjoy this archived content as much I did. This seems to be the sequel to Wait, why did you leave the RoN Discord?
Update 2024-12-27: there has since been a large DLC update to the special. My meltdown quota has been reached for the year so I won’t be purchasing the DLC for review and commentary, but feel free to check it out yourself!
We begin, as ever, with shitposting — including some decent mouseposting — on the Rise of Patience server. My messages at the end of this screenshot are verbatim words from a player who indicated that they didn’t want object masks to fixed (because they had a reading allergy, exasperated by a logic allergy). Quoting it here is, of course, also some good shitposting.
I do need to note that partway into this comedy-drama special, I changed my name and profile picture (I’m the guy with the red background here). I don’t have a timestamp of exactly when I did it, but I started off with my normal rabbit picture + MHLoppy combo – I haven’t gone back to “correct” the screenshots from when I was using my usual profile out of laziness.
The name change will make more sense later!
Somehow the idea of nerfing Cattle is so offensive that Chicken’s neurons are activated, and like a rabid dog he leaps into action. It’s easy to be sympathetic here – Cattle is indeed a very weak rare. Like really, +1 Citizen armor? C’mon guys, what is that?
I’m not the best TF2 player,1 but I’m pretty sure stabs can only be frontstabs (heinous crimes), or backstabs (the way spy was designed to be played), but not both.
But hey, I could be wrong.
I read these messages, considered what the appropriate response was, and then provided it.
Note: I’m not personally sure if there were now-deleted messages in the #strictly-ron-chat channel – when I went to check there was nothing relevant to this part of the conversation there.
Anyway, the meltdown continues and the popcorn flows freely. Kaitaro (who has been jokingly using the handle Vandrien for a while on the RoP server — but who is not actually Vandrien) is being provided an unprecedented level of power to harness. He thrives on shitposts and copypastas.
As RoN players will know, multi-tasking even a couple of things simultaneously can be pretty challenging. It’s quite high praise to say that someone is competently managing a minimum of four different things simultaneously — very kind!
I agree with the sentiment of the last messages here – it is a great shitpost.
Speaking of which, we experience a brief interlude with mouseposting:
Earlier in life I became quite a guarded person, but lately I’ve been trending towards being more open earlier in relationships (and I don’t just mean romantic relationships). Vibe-checking more, earlier, lets both parties better evaluate if the relationship’s a good fit or not. Asking about Javelineers may be a good avenue towards accomplishing that goal (disclaimer: unlikely to work outside of a RoN-related shitposting channel).
Not wanting to be all give and no take, I contributed to the discussion with a poll. Although the poll isn’t currently completed, shown are the results at time of writing, with Kaitaro’s shitpost is in the lead (deserved!). HnZ is also correct, though object masks are server-agnostic so I think this is fair.
Anyway, back to meltdown.
I got counter-polled, questioning who is more of the girl: me, HnZ, or both (which, really seems like a bad poll – how can it be both of us?). I voted for me, and although this poll is also not yet completed, I’m currently in the lead at time of writing! Suck it HnZ.2
However, I did want to clarify if voting for myself was allowed.
A couple years ago or so, I saw Daniel Thrasher (who seems pretty funny but I otherwise don’t know much about) endorse an online therapy service. I went to look up what it was and briefly double-checked that it seemed legitimate (licensed therapists etc) before linking it. I haven’t personally used it but Daniel says he did and that it was helpful for him.
Edit: it seems I didn’t check hard enough (fair, I didn’t check very hard), and people say that they suck. I care enough to mention it, but not enough to look into it because I’m not planning to use the service.
I did try therapy (more traditional, in-person therapy) for a couple of years or so and I didn’t find it that helpful personally, but that doesn’t mean others won’t! Everyone is different, and from what I understand, one of the biggest things to look for is finding a therapist that you seem to click with. I didn’t seem to build a deep rapport with either of the therapists I tried even after many sessions, so in all honesty maybe that might be a significant factor in why I didn’t seem to get much out of my own experience.
I’d also note that the wrong type of therapy may be worse than no therapy at all, but I’m not an expert in this area, so you might like to do some research of your own.
Anyway, Chicken was not responsive to the idea.
Two rapidly switching frames of Mococo licking the screen has become one of my favorite gifs.
Unfortunately it looks like Chicken did not like this gif as much as I did. Bau bau… ⤵︎⤵︎
I also really loved Arcane, and you should totally check it out. I think it’s good even if you have no experience in LoL, but obviously if you do there’ll be some extra depths to parts of it for you.
Somewhere around this time I began to get the idea of changing my profile picture and name to something more appropriate — probably because of the combination of the smug Bae gif and the Jinx “that’s me” gif — but we’ll get back to that soon.
Just posting a gif of some guy slapping a line of women in the face. Totally ordinary stuff.
I opted not to vote in this poll, because it doesn’t actually ask a question, so it’s not clear how someone is supposed to decide how to vote. In case you’re curious, at time of writing the votes are one vote for option A (from Kaitaro), and one for option C (Chicken).
We (well, he) leaked into #general for a bit, shown below.
Still not sure what that means. One of life’s great mysteries I guess! Do note that some of the screenshots above are not quite chronological with the screenshots below, but I think it’s easier to follow than jump-cutting between the two channels multiple times.
Anyway, back to not #general:
I personally prefer the Mococo licking gif, but that’s just me.
Here’s the linked message in #ron-copy-giveaway. To bring this up in an unrelated context more than a year latter is nothing short of utterly deranged.
Aaand back to the main show:
One of the messages (not pictured in any of the screenshots, on account of its deletion) was removed for breaking Discord ToS.
In order to better maintain the authenticity of future copypastas from this meltdown, I wanted to know the gist of what the deleted message was. There’s value to be had in respecting the spirit of the original, even if that means adapting it to meet modern social standards.
I think it was here that I had changed my name and profile picture, but I’m not 100% sure on the precise timing.
This picture was a gift to the internet from the madlads at anarchychess, made during the 2023 reddit API protests. I got to witness that perhaps ultimately insignificant moment of internet history live, and I rather cherish it. The picture seemed like a good fit for the unfolding conversation in the present moment.
Back to the messages:
Although perhaps everyone does deserve to be supported in their endeavors, perhaps not all endeavors deserve to be supported. Nonetheless, slay bestie.
I linked to a post in a different channel, shown below for extra context:
Back to business.
I stand by what I said about therapy. Someone once relayed a story about how courage isn’t about not being afraid, but rather being afraid but doing it anyway, and I quite like that.
And back to our regularly scheduled programming.
As I’ve explained, I did actually try therapy!
I also don’t consider myself that scary 🙁3
I would like to again link to the previous episode in this saga, where I said one single word: “lol”. Out of everyone in this conversation — if you can call it that — it’s not clear that I was the one “popping off”. That is obviously Kaitaro, with his amazing level 10 shitpost.
Anyway, I had another thing I wanted to clarify. It was said that I was in lvoe [sic] with HnZ, and I wanted to know if this would affect my sexual orientation, as that’s the sort of thing I think you’re supposed to try to keep up with.
Plus – Jatin once said he loved Mentalist! It could be quite a problem if he was actually gay, given that he’s married to a woman.
I had definitely already changed my profile pic and name at this point, making the Jinx gif just *chef’s kiss*.
If you’ve ever wondered whether it was possible for someone to have negative self-awareness, the answer is yes! Though I guess this is just a single study, and may be subject to replication problems.
As of writing, this is the last message in the channel. I haven’t intentionally removed or modified any of the messages or their order except where explicitly noted.4
Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays!
P.s., sorry for being so slow on CBP work. I (probably) have a sleep disorder and sometimes wake up more tired than I was before going to sleep. My best sleep does not leave me feeling energized or well-rested, so I’m often running on fumes or something close to it. Not trying to fix it before working on Alpha 10 during last summer (winter for northerners) is one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in the last few years and I want to avoid repeating it this summer.
The state of CBP is currently very complicated in just about every category, and I had left Alpha 9 in a state where I intended to never release a major patch again, so it wasn’t really designed for what we’re currently trying to do to it.5
- The highest I ever got in the competitive scene was being a substitute player in the lowest level league of ozfortress.
- Oh NO, is this phrase GAY?
- My WordPress install now automatically changes the emoticon to an emoji. Seems like a bad default opt-in moment.
- Here’s the link to the start of these messages: https://discord.com/channels/546122889355853852/865569964421021756/1312845673766588548
- If you know of a programmer in India who can not only take care of all of that in one day, PLEASE LET ME KNOW IMMEDIATELY, AND I WILL HIRE THEM AT ABOVE-MARKET RATE.