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This is one I've been thinking about for at least a year now, another one for the psudo-intellectual thought bucket. Why do people defend media like their lives depend on it? The example that comes to mind was a random comment I saw on Roger Ebert's Revenge of the Sith review where a commentor said they were happy that Roger Ebert was "On the right side of history"... Like it's the second World War?

And I won't deny, I used to be like that when I was younger, that bizarre tribalism that comes from "Well, I like X, and if X is bad, then I'm wrong and that's not okay". I feel like a fucking alien sometimes since I've gotten over it, but I can't properly express this feeling to people and I'm hoping by writing this out I can articulate my thoughts better.

It just feels like more Us Vs Them nonsense, users on subreddits posting box office comparisons between movies and their reboots, "Look at how much money it made, it's objectively good, I'm not wrong see" - /u/strawman.

I'm trying to do one of these every day I can, not too many words here, maybe I'll edit it later when I think of something else.

Hey, this is my first ever post so if I'm breaking any rules or committing any kind of faux pas, just let me know and I'll fix it.

I was diagnosed when I was 11/12 (Back when they still called it Aspergers) and people would tell me that I see the world differently, which stuck with me but I've never been sure what it meant... That was until I played Baldurs Gate 3

For people that haven't played it, it's like Dungeons and Dragons, you crash land on a beach after the opening and very quickly meet up with your companions. A goth woman, a frog woman, a wizard, vampire man, bear man, and Will, who would probably cry tears of shame if he saw a married woman's ankles. Also some other people I straight up forgot.

And no, Minthara is not a companion, because you have to be evil to recruit her and being evil makes me feel bad.

When I first started playing the game I met Shadowheart on the beach and didn't meet a single other companion, that's because the game has a jump ability, and I immediately used it on the nearby cliffs. Because when I'm given a game mechanic, the first thing I gotta do is mess around with it and break it. So I hopped around and made it to the grove, assuming the other companioms would show up later, then I was told to go to a goblin camp, Shadowheart and I made a beeline straight there because it seemed time was of the essence (It wasn't).

It wasn't until I hopped onto Discord with my brother that he asked where the hell all my companions are...

That reignited a memory from some years prior where I was playing Ocarina of Time for the first time on my 3DS, y'know the water temple? They apparently made it easier in the 3DS version by displaying things better. Well that certainly didn't help me, imagine my shock after I beat the entire water temple and then entered a Zora shop that was selling the blue tunic, the one that lets you breathe underwater, indefinitely... It could almost be considered a humble brag that I beat the temple without it but honestly I'm just dumb as all hell.

About a year or three later I'm playing the Witcher 3, same brother wants to know where my potions are, turns out all you need to do to replenish them is rest with alcohol in your inventory, I was keeping Geralt alive with bread.

So where am I going with this? Baldurs Gate 3 was a watershed moment for me where I realised my brain does not think on the same wavelength as everyone else's, nobody I talked to even understood how I could miss those companions. Once you start noticing things like that it just doesn't stop. Once at work, I had a co-worker talking about building a system for encrypting files using AES, instead of doing the intelligent thing and just getting an encryption library for Python, I flew straight to the Wikipedia page for AES encryption so I could start building my own.

Is that one a humble brag? God no, because I never actually built the system, just jumped to the most complicated solution possible and got confused.

You hear hooves and think horses, Dr House hears hooves and thinks zebras, I hear hooves and think of something from The Island of Doctor Moreau.