Not even "old" old but realizing that doors begin closing to you. It's a simple fact of life of course that no one could follow all their dreams and whims let alone a small fraction of them. But still a piquant feeling of loss.

But oh well, death is likely to be pleasant or neutral at least. Might as well see the rest of life first.

Far and away the best benefit to PC gaming is mods-- they let you personalize any game and make it better for yourself. Any dev that supports mods is doing the right thing.

Are you comfortable sharing your motivations with him? With my ex, I felt this weird pressure against doing what I wanted to do because I would always stress about potentially going against her plans. It wasn't a good dynamic.

Surely they wouldn't object to you cleaning and would want to help you get that done, both because it's important to you and generally nice if someone else is doing the cleaning hehe.

Fallout 4 perhaps? There's enough customization in the difficulty that she should be able to make it an easy romp, but there still would be a jump scare or two unfortunately. Otherwise it's solo exploration, real-time combat with RPG elements, and you can have a dog companion.

I was born in 1990 and this would mean I look absolutely incredible for 50.

Either that or people who don't care about having constant car payments and just lease new ones all the time I guess hehe.

My FIL had a '98 Honda CR-V that had almost 200k miles until it racked up too much in repairs to keep. I told myself when I was in the market, I was definitely going for a Honda.

The time came and I got a used 2012 Civic with 35k miles. Now the car's 11 years old, around 160k miles and still going strong. Building to less than exceptional reliability seems like a terrible business decision unless you go strictly for the customers for whom money is no object, and/or the ones with more dollars than sense.

The Elder Scrolls has heavy amounts of fantasy racism and discrimination in them. Not saying HL has to include it but it definitely could.

But he eventually found faith when he saw the first question on the test and went, "Oh God."

It's not actually the muscles, just a different part of the brain. The connections associated with the movement you want get stronger over a lot of repetition. If I'm not mistaken it's mostly the back part of your brain called the cerebellum that controls this, and as the slang term suggests, you don't have to actively think about it. Very handy for things you need to do precisely, quickly, and often, like throwing in sports.

Training him to do the Michael Jackson lean.

Good ol' Florida Man never fails.

Oedipus: "You don't say."

I'd find it really hard to believe if they don't have decals for that sort of thing. Hand painted would be awesome but not everyone is able to do that well hehe.

Stick-on glow stars for the ceiling would be cool if available. Otherwise maybe a dark or medium blue for the walls with nebula/galaxy designs?

Bureaucracy existed well before the middle ages. It could just be that European systems favored a more centralized government with less delegation structure for their agents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy#History

It's safe to say that after the manorial system, it came about with the rise in republican government as a good way to divide power among several officials.

It's most commonly thought that Dec. 25 isn't his actual birthday. It was chosen for its closeness to pagan holidays to make Christianity more palatable to the local faithful.

That is a good detail to include, thank you.

You're too kind. :D It's my first and only novel so far and I promise it's a total mess. I might return to it someday but for now it's stashed away lol.

But just to stir your imagination a little, it's called New Albion's Bargain. That scenario I mentioned is sort of a backdrop for the main events, which are inspired by the legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In the original story, Sir Gawain sees his chivalric values challenged and suffers negative consequences every time he messes up. My treatment follows a starship captain who's given the chance to reject his authoritarian junta and empathize with the "rebels" who never agreed to being ruled in the first place.

I dare say it's a cool idea but I feel I don't quite have the skill or motivation to make it publishable. :/

The only reason I knew about that was through research for a sci-fi novel I started. Basically the age-old "parent nation establishes a colony and taxes it, colonists remember they're on a different-frigging-planet and declare independence." It's still in really bad shape lol, but I hope that we can get ahead of any interplanetary conflicts before they start.

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 forbids governments from declaring sovereignty over celestial bodies, and I presume that would extend to companies claiming private ownership.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

Granted that's likely to change if we can more easily get there and hash out new laws, but for now it seems that ownership is still forbidden.

Now I wasn't ever in the Navy, but I'd be willing to bet "Don't shoot your own ship in the explosives" is probably close to rule #1.

One can imagine that if you weigh 10,000 pounds, economy of movement might be somewhat important.

Pineapple on pizza.

Sounds like that would make for an awesome sci-fi story, with obvious symbolism for the two sides living "in different worlds."