"Hey Jack, how's the D&D going?"
"It's not, hit the same snag it does in almost every other time I've run a game."
"Oh? What's that?"
"Players don't trust me to run a balanced game and the moment I actually enforce the rules that were explained from the start people think I'm being too harsh."
"not going to give on this one?"
"Nope. I've given enough already."
"So what's the plan?"
"Delete the group in VRC if no one wants to keep playing, probably delete the discord server since I'm the only one that really posts in there, and move on with my life."
"Even after all the work you've put into it?"
"Man. I do this work all the time. With no recognition or credit given. It's nothing new, I just made the mistake of letting people peek behind the curtain."
"So what?' You go non verbal again and give up on socialization?"
"I mean, yeah. Being verbal, open, and honest has just gotten me spit in the face so many times."
"Have you tried being more likeable?"
"Fuck off."
"Hey, why are you attacking me?"
"Look. I'm Autistic and Nonverbal most of the time. The only reason I learned to speak as well as I do is because of this right here. Learning to write and then reading it out loud. Just because I'm able to speak on mic now doesn't change the fact that until the Pandemic I only started speaking on mic because I was going stir crazy and it was the only way I could talk to anyone about video games and what not. That speaking on mic was absolutely terrifying. That I had full blown panic attacks for the first six months of raiding in Destiny any time I had to say anything or do a callout."
"So what, you give up and go nonverbal again?"
"Dunno. Probably."
"So you're just giving up?"
"Na dude. That's the one thing I don't think I know how to do. Withdrawl, recover, and move forward. But as many in my past have learned, once they loose my trust Id on't look back."
"You can't keep cutting people off like that, they'll run out of people."
"There's still plenty of people ahead of me in the games I want to play in, and if someone really wanted to earn my trust back they'd have to work their assess off to catch back up. Because I'm slowing myself down anymore. Every time I've tried to do that I ended up getting hurt physically, emotionally, or both."
"So what? You're telling people to lead, follow, or get out of the way/"
"Pretty much, because according the stats I'm at the half way point. And with all the injuries and shit it's probably more than half way."
"So your'e having a midlife crisis, is that the issue?""
"Look, some dudes buy sports cars and date 20 year olds. I bought a computer and am trying to leave gaming spaces better than how I found them. Sure, you can call that a midlife crisis, or you could call it me sticking to a mission statment I set decades ago. If anything, the only 'crisis' i'm having is refusing to let people be disrespectful to me anymore and maintaining boundries that I should have been able to my whole life instead of only discovering that I actually could in the last few years."
"So you still going to just delete it all and start over gain?"
"I fall, I get up. I dust myself off. Make sure nothing's broken and keep going. I'll write and rewrite and rewrite until it get's picked up."
"Shouldn't you finish it first?"
"Honey, I write the ending first every time and work backwards from there. The rest is just filling in the holes and tailoring it to fit the budget."
"you're accent's coming out Jack..."
"Oh yeah....that means I'm about to be the whole ass problem."
